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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

Hangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd.,

and Unicorn Global, Inc.,

Plaintiffs,

v.

The Partnerships and Unincorporated 

Associations Identified on Schedule "A"

Defendants.

 Case No.: 1:20-cv-04806

 

DEFENDANT GYROOR US’S MOTION TO DISMISS AND SEVER

PURSUANT TO RULE 20 AND RULE 21 AND DISSOLVE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

Pursuant to Court’s Standing Order, Parties have conferred prior to the filing of this Motion and 

agreed to the following proposed briefing schedule: Response due May 20, 2021; Reply due June 7, 

2021.

NOW COMES Defendant GYROOR US (“Moving Defendant”), by and through its attorneys, 

respectfully moves for an Order (a) pursuant to Rule 20(a) and 21 of the Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure Rule, severing and dismissing the action as to all defendants or just Moving Defendant on the 

ground that Plaintiffs Hangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd. and Unicorn Global, Inc. 

(“Plaintiffs”) improperly joined Moving Defendant in this action, (b) dissolving the preliminary 

injunction entered against Moving Defendant, and (c) granting such other and further relief as may be 

just and proper. 

INTRODUCTION

It is not enough for Plaintiff to “simply allege that multiple defendants have infringed the same 

patent or trademark to meet Rule 20’s requirements.” Estee Lauder Cosmetics Ltd. v. P’ships, et al., 

334 F.R.D. 182, 187 (N.D. Ill. 2020). Trademark infringement cases involving large numbers of 

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e-commerce stores are common in this district. However, what is uncommon is how the defendant 

“pool” is so cumbersomely purported to be interrelated and joinable.

For the following reasons, Moving Defendant respectfully requests that this Court dismiss this 

case in its entirety under Rule 20 and 21, or alternatively sever all defendants or just Moving Defendant.

BACKGROUND

On August 17, 2020, Plaintiffs initiated this present action by filling their Complaint against 

individuals and entities on Schedule A, which owned and operated ecommerce accounts. See Compl., 

Dkt. No. 1.

On November 19, 2020, Plaintiffs filed their Third Amended Complaint against approximately 

36 individuals and entities on Schedule A, B and C. See Third Amend. Compl., Dkt. No. 101.

Plaintiffs allege that all defendants listed on Schedule A, B and C committed Design Patent 

Infringement for the following four different design patents, Patent No. D737,723, Patent No. D738,256, 

Patent No. D785,112, and Patent No. D784,195.

ARGUMENTS

“[A] litigant cannot throw all of his grievances, against dozens of different parties, into one 

stewpot.” Wheeler v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 689 F.3d 680, 683 (7th Cir. 2012). Plaintiffs have

prepared separate, allegedly-infringing evidence for each defendant. See Exhibit 1 to Third Amend. 

Compl., Dkt. No. 101-1. Plaintiffs’ exhibits reveal that there is insufficient similarity between the 

defendants, and certainly not as to all of the defendants. Therefore, all defendants are clearly being sued 

together as a way for Plaintiffs to save itself time and money. However, this approach is impermissible 

under Federal Rules. Plaintiffs’ claims against all defendants should be dismissed, or at least severed.

1. Plaintiffs Improperly Joined Moving Defendant

Though liberally permitted, joinder is appropriate only if: (i) any right to relief is asserted 

against them jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, 

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occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and (ii) any question of law or fact common to all 

defendants will arise in the action. Fed. R. Civ. P. 20(a)(2) (emphasis added); Intercon Research 

Assocs., Ltd. v. Dresser Indus., Inc., 696 F.2d 53 (7th Cir. 1982). Thus, misjoinder occurs when a 

plaintiff fails to satisfy either of these two requirements. Elmore v. Henderson, 227 F.3d 1009, 1011 (7th 

Cir. 2000).

The allegations in the Complaint purporting to establish joinder cannot plausibly result in this 

coincidence. It is apparent that Plaintiff has done nothing more than trying to evade the requirements of 

Rule 20. See, Estee Lauder Cosmetics Ltd. v. P’ships & Unincorporated Assocs. Identified on Schedule 

A, No. 20-cv- 00845 (N.D. Ill. Jun. 22, 2020) (J. Lee) (“Plaintiff must allege specific facts indicating ties 

between each defendant, including shared, or substantially shared, identifiers that do not encompass a 

significant portion of either all e-commerce counterfeiters generally or all [plaintiff] counterfeiters 

specifically.”).

Even presuming Plaintiffs’ claims may involve a common question of law or fact, Plaintiff 

cannot meet at least the first part of Rule 20(a)(2) that requires “transactional relatedness” of its claims 

for relief. This court follows the prevailing rule that a party fails to satisfy Rule 20(a)’s requirement of a 

common transaction or occurrence where unrelated defendants, based on different acts, are alleged to 

have infringed some intellectual property right. See, e.g., Slep-Tone Entm't Corp. v. Roberto, No. 12-

CV-5750, 2013 WL 5748896, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 22, 2013); McDowell v. Morgan Stanley & Co., 645 

F. Supp. 2d 690, 697 (N.D. Ill. 2009) (“One or more defendants’ similar conduct, without anything 

more, does not rise to a sufficient level that would justify joining those defendants in a single action 

pursuant to Rule 20.”); SB Designs v. Reebok Int’l, Ltd., 305 F. Supp. 2d 888, 892 (N.D. Ill. 2004) (“The 

fact that the defendants allegedly violated the same trademark does not mean that Plaintiff’s claims 

against them arise out of the same transaction or occurrence.”); Androphy v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., 31 

F. Supp. 2d 620, 623 (N.D. Ill. 1998) (holding that defendants in patent-infringement case who sold 

different products and were competitors of one another were improperly joined).

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Despite that Plaintiffs have already identified each defendant’s separate, alleged infringing acts. 

See Exhibit 1 to Third Amend. Compl., Dkt. No. 101-1. In the third amended complaint, Plaintiffs allege 

conclusorily that defendants were “shar[ing] unique identifiers”, “being authorized to one other”, and 

“working in active concert.” Third Amend. Compl. ¶¶ 36, 37, 39. Notably, Plaintiffs do not allege (nor

could it allege in good faith) that all defendants are interrelated with each other. Id. at ¶37. Put another

way, there is no claim that all defendants are interrelated with each other for selling alleged infringing

products. The only core facts that defendants have been alleged to share in common are that they 

allegedly infringed one or more design patents owned by Plaintiffs, and that the storefronts or listings 

are alike. The fact is all Amazon storefronts and/or listings are alike if an Amazon seller goes with the 

default setting of its storefront and/or listing. However, Plaintiff’s allegations are rather conclusive since 

the fact is that Moving Defendant is the only defendant owned by Dongguan Saibotan Nengyuan Keji 

Co. Ltd among other defendants. All in all, there is no evidentiary overlap in proving what one 

defendant did and what another did.

Based on the foregoing, it is clear that Plaintiffs have failed to satisfy its burden of establishing 

the prerequisites for permissive joinder under Rule 20(a)(2). The Court should therefore sever and dismiss 

this action as to Moving Defendant.

2. Discretionary Severance or Dismissal of Moving Defendants Is Warranted

Where parties are misjoined, such as here, the Court has broad discretion to drop them from 

the case. DirecTV, Inc. v. Perez, No. 03-CV-3504 2003 WL 22682344 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 12, 2003); See, 

Rice v. Sunrise Express, Inc., 209 F.3d 1008, 1016 (7th Cir.2000) (“[i]t is within the district court’s 

broad discretion whether to sever a claim under Rule 21.”); Aiello v. Kingston, 947 F.2d 834, 835 

(7th Cir.1991) (“Fed. R. Civ. P. 21 allows a court to sever claims that are logically distinct...”). If 

dismissal will not cause harm to either party, then it is an appropriate alternative to severance. 

Strandlund v. Hawley, 532 F.3d 741, 745 (8th Cir. 2008) (“Both the Third and Seventh Circuits have 

interpreted Rule 21 to permit dismissals of parties only if they do not cause gratuitous harm to the 

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parties, for the discretion delegated to the trial judge to dismiss under Rule 21 is restricted to what is 

just.”); Martinez v. Haleas, No. 07 C 6112, 2010 WL 1337555, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 30, 2010) 

(dismissing parties where “each of these individual claims require individual fact finding and 

discovery”).

Dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claims against Moving Defendant will not result in any harm or 

prejudice to Plaintiffs’ claims against other defendants for relief in this matter. Courts have found harm 

against the plaintiff only in instances where a plaintiff would be time-barred from refiling a complaint 

at the time of dismissal, or where the case has proceeded past the initial pleading stages. See, Martinez; 

C.f., Elmore, 227 F.3d at 1011 (refusing to dismiss improperly joined defendants because plaintiff 

would be time-barred from refiling a new complaint). The parties have generally not yet initiated 

discovery in this action and the Lanham Act does not contain a statute of limitations. Petrella v. 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., 572 U.S. 663, fn. 15 (2014). 

Moreover, neither the defendants on Schedule A, B, C nor this Court derive any benefit from the 

joinder foisted upon them in this case. The only party to benefit is Plaintiffs, whose motive for abusing 

the joinder rules is clear – keeping its litigation costs artificially low at the expense of the judicial system 

by paying a single filing fee for claims against multiple defendants rather than a separate filing fee for 

each defendant. The only economy that litigating these cases as a single action would achieve is an 

economy to plaintiffs—the economy of not having to pay a separate filing fee for each action brought.

However, the desire to avoid paying statutorily mandated filing fees affords no basis for joinder. 

Plaintiffs affirmatively provided evidence for each defendant with different products allegedly infringing 

different design patents. Not all defendants whom plaintiffs seek to sue are destined to be joined together 

in a single action, especially where, as here, Plaintiffs cannot satisfy the prerequisites for permissive 

joinder under Rule 20. But even if Plaintiffs could satisfy those prerequisites, there is ample reason for the 

Court to order severance as a matter of discretion. It is self-evident that the Court should not exercise its 

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discretion in a manner that would encourage more such steamroller litigation. There is important work 

that the federal judicial system that needs to do, and which our society needs it to do.

Further, where the Court has determined that defendants have been misjoined, it is an accepted 

practice to dismiss the action against all defendants. See, CP Productions, Inc. v. Does 1- 33, 2011 WL

737761, n. 2 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 24, 2011) (“[i]t would constitute a real stretch of the normal meaning of 

language for [plaintiff] to call Rule 20(a)(2)(A) into play as the asserted predicate for lumping its 

separate asserted claims into a single lawsuit.”); Future Blue, Inc. v. Does 1- 300, No. 10-cv-6256 Dkt. 

65 (N.D. Ill. Jun. 08, 2011). In light of the demonstrably-questionable collecting of all defendants in 

the present case, including Moving Defendant, should be either dismissed or severed.

CONCLUSION

For the ongoing reasons, Moving Defendant respectfully requests that this Honorable Court 

dismiss this case under Rule 20 and Rule 21, or alternatively sever Moving Defendant, dissolve the 

preliminary injunction, and other grant such other and further relief as may be just and proper.

Date: 4/28/2021

Respectfully Submitted: 

/s/ Tianyu Ju

Tianyu Ju, Esq.

Glacier Law PLLC

200 East Randolph, Suite 5100

Chicago, IL 60601

Iris.ju@glacier.law

Tel: +1 (312) 448-7772

Fax: +1 (312)-801-4587

Attorney for Defendant

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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on this April 29, 2021, I electronically filed the foregoing file 

with the Clerk of Court using the CM/ECF system, and service was perfected on all counsel of record 

and interested parties through this system, which will deliver a true and correct copy of the foregoing 

documents via CM/ECF.

Date: 4/29/2021 /s/ Tianyu Ju

Tianyu Ju, Esq.

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