Opinion ID: 560360
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: 2 On September 21, 1989, plaintiff filed a complaint alleging federal and common law trademark infringement, false designation of origin, common law unfair competition, unjust enrichment, dilution and breach of agreement. On December 15, defendants filed an answer, and thereafter moved for judgment on the pleadings pursuant to Rule 12(c). 3 To rule on defendants' Rule 12(c) motion, the district court was required to view the facts presented in the pleadings and the inferences to be drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to plaintiff, the nonmoving party. Society Hill Civic Ass'n v. Harris, 632 F.2d 1045, 1054 (3d Cir.1980); see also 5A C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, Sec. 1368, at 519 (1990) [hereinafter 5A Federal Practice ]. We turn to the facts as they are alleged in plaintiff's complaint. 4 Plaintiff is in the business of developing and marketing information retrieval services. These services are used by researchers to locate and obtain relevant information published worldwide in scholarly, scientific and technical journals and books. Plaintiff is the owner of an incontestable trademark, CURRENT CONTENTS, that was registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on December 23, 1958, Registration No. 671,569. 2 That mark is used by plaintiff in periodicals containing the reproductions of title pages of a large number of current periodicals in a variety of fields. Plaintiff's CURRENT CONTENTS periodicals have substantial sales and have been published continuously since 1957. 5 Defendants are also in the business of publishing books and journals. Defendants publish a journal entitled SCAN which lists the contents of defendants' publications on certain scholarly, scientific and technical subjects. SCAN is in direct competition with plaintiff's CURRENT CONTENTS periodicals. 6 In early 1985, the subtitle of SCAN described it as a guide to current contents of journals published by Gordon & Breach. On February 27, 1985, plaintiff's senior vice president of finance and administration sent the president of Gordon a letter requesting defendants to voluntarily cease and desist from using the phrase current contents in light of plaintiff's incontestable mark, CURRENT CONTENTS. On September 17, 1985, after several months of negotiations, plaintiff's attorney sent another letter to Gordon confirming an oral agreement (the agreement) whereby defendants agreed to discontinue all use of the phrase current contents, and to use the following as the subtitle for SCAN: A guide to the contents of current issues of journals published by Gordon & Breach. Plaintiff never received a written response to that letter. 7 From September 1985 to February 1989, Gordon did not use the phrase current contents within the subtitle of SCAN. The February 24, 1989 issue of Science, however, contained an advertisement for SCAN which described it as ... a free guide to the current contents of books and journals published by Gordon and Breach Science Publishers and Harwood Academic Publishers. Upon learning of this advertisement, plaintiff's senior vice president telephoned Gordon and notified it that plaintiff considered defendants' use of current contents a breach of their agreement. Plaintiff's representative was told that the use of current contents was due to an oversight by new employees and that defendants would cease to use those words. On March 29, 1989, plaintiff sent a letter to Gordon confirming the details of this telephone conversation. Plaintiff never received a response to the March 29 letter, and defendants continue to use current contents in the description of SCAN. 8 On August 30, 1990, the district court granted defendants' Rule 12(c) motion. Plaintiff filed a timely notice of appeal.