Opinion ID: 4539687
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Trade Dress Infringement Claims

Text: Finally, the district court’s finding that the trade dress claims were particularly weak lacks adequate support. Again, the district court allowed Munchkin to amend its complaint to include these claims. LNC never filed a motion to dismiss, and the merits of Munchkin’s trade dress allegations were never adjudicated. In its fee order, the district court accepted as true LNC’s assertion that “many of the alleged features of Munchkin’s trade dress” were commonly used in prior cups before Munchkin introduced its drinking cups embodying the alleged trade dress configuration. Munchkin at 7. But even assuming that unsubstantiated assertion is true, the fact that different cups share several features does not, by itself, demonstrate that the alleged trade dress lacks secondary meaning or is otherwise not protectable. VIP Prods. LLC v. Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc., 953 F.3d 1170, 1173–74 (9th Cir. 2020) (“Although whiskey companies use many of the individual elements employed by JDPI on their bottles, the Jack Daniel’s trade dress ‘is a combination [of] bottle and label elements,’ . . . and the district court correctly found that these elements taken together are both nonfunctional and Case: 19-1454 Document: 50 Page: 16 Filed: 06/08/2020 16 MUNCHKIN, INC. v. LUV N' CARE, LTD. distinctive.”); In re Chippendales USA, Inc., 622 F.3d 1346, 1355–56 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (holding that whether the trade dress was “a common basic shape or design” was “inapplicable” because “there has been no showing that the [trade dress] is common generally”). LNC’s fee motion, however, presented a conclusory and inadequate case to demonstrate that it was objectively unreasonable for Munchkin to assert any protectable trade dress rights. Asserting that “many” features of Munchkin’s product design are contained in prior cups without a detailed showing of how that affects the scope of Munchkin’s asserted trade dress right, or even identifying which features were already on prior cups, amounts to a failure of proof. See Chippendales, 622 F.3d at 1355–56. Likewise, LNC’s asserted belief that it is “highly unlikely” Munchkin could prove secondary meaning for its product configuration on the market for less than two years is nothing more than speculation. And, even more critically, none of these barebones allegations justify a finding that Munchkin’s position that it owned a protectable, valid trade dress right was unreasonable. As with the patent claims and the trademark claims, the district court abused its discretion in finding that Munchkin’s trade dress claims were exceptional, when LNC presented nothing to justify such a finding.