San Diego Comic-Con Petitions Judge To Have Salt Lake Comic Con Pay Its Attorney's Fees, Bar It From Calling Itself A 'Comic Convention'

from the don't-describe-yourself dept

Perhaps you thought that the legal drama between the famous San Diego Comic-Con and the Salt Lake Comic Con was over. Our ongoing coverage of this trademark dispute stemming from SDCC somehow having a valid trademark on "comic-con", a shortened descriptor phrase for a comic convention, largely concluded when SDCC "won" in court, being awarded $20,000 after initially asking for $12 million in damages. With the focus now turning to the roughly gazillion other comic conventions that exist using the "comic-con" phrase in their names and marketing materials, this particular dispute seemed to have come to a close.

But not so much, actually. In post-trial motions, SDCC petitioned Judge Battaglia to consider the case "exceptional" so that SDCC can recover attorney's fees from SLCC. The arguement for SDCC appears to mostly be that they spent a shit-ton of money on attorneys for the case.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia heard a host of posttrial motions Thursday, including San Diego Comic-Con’s request for over $4.5 million in attorney fees which have already been paid in full. San Diego Comic-Con attorney Callie Bjurstrom with Pillsbury Law told Battaglia Thursday he should find the case is “exceptional” so that attorney fees and costs can be awarded.

“This was a very expensive case; the reason this case was so expensive was because of defendants and their counsel and the way they litigated this case,” Bjurstrom said.

It will be interesting to see how Judge Battaglia rules on the assertion that SLCC's defense of itself warrants its paying SDCC's attorney's fees. What exactly was SLCC supposed to do, not try to defend itself in the best way possible? One also wonders if SDCC would be petitioning for attorney's fees had the jury found that SLCC's infringement was not willful, resulting in the paltry $20k award. Perhaps, perhaps not. What this sure looks like is the SDCC realizing that this "win" came at the cost of a hilariously large amount of money and it is attempting to mitigate that loss.

SDCC also petitioned the court to bar SLCC from using its trademarks. That sort of thing would be par for the course except for two things. First, again, this trademark is ridiculous. It's purely descriptive. Second, hammering home that fact, SDCC doesn't want SLCC to even be able to properly describe the type of event it is.

But San Diego Comic-Con’s request went a step further than simply asking Battaglia to enjoin the Salt Lake convention operators from infringing its trademarks: it asked the judge to bar the Salt Lake convention from using the words “comic convention” or phonetic equivalents to “Comic Con” or “comic convention.”

That request should lay plain how dumb this all is. If a comic convention cannot refer to itself as such because that is too close to the trademark "comic-con", then it should be plain as day that "comic-con" is purely descriptive and, therefore, invalid as a trademark. I wouldn't be surprised to see this petition to the court turn up at the USPTO in a bid to cancel SDCC's trademark entirely. That's certainly what I would be doing if I were heading up any of the hundreds of comic cons out there.

Filed Under: comic conventions, salt lake comic con, san diego comic-con, trademark
Companies: salt lake comic con, san diego comic-con