Opinion ID: 507446
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: License Agreement

Text: 28 Once the issue of the validity of the trademark is removed, we may sharpen our review on the real concern of this case. As the district court correctly discerned, this case is about proprietary rights based on the Lien-San Juan license agreement. San Juan framed the issue of Lien's alleged breach of this license as a predicate for trademark infringement. Instead, the evidence conclusively established that Lien's license was either void from the outset or voidable at its instance because San Juan had already given to SUN the exclusive rights to sign up installing dealers in Kansas. As Parent testified, it never occurred to him, never rang a bell, that Lien had Kansas. 29 The evidence framed a scenario in which Parent was apportioning off sales areas, Sullivan and Lohman were actively trying to reassert the company's control, and Lien was caught in the cross fire. San Juan never established common law trademark protection in Kansas because it never did any business there. 10 While there was an interval during which Lien used the SAN JUAN mark beyond the purported license term, there was testimony to establish that Lien was careful to represent the origin of its pools and even changed the corporate name to FREE SPIRIT POOLS shortly after San Juan demanded it cease using its name. Clearly, while San Juan had no proprietary rights in Kansas to vindicate through Lien's dealership, Lien suffered no damage from the assertion of those purported rights. As the court correctly noted, the passage of time defeated both San Juan's need for injunctive relief and Lien's claim for damages based on the breach of the license agreement. Moreover, the court correctly decided that Lien had not splashed the San Juan pool, but had sufficiently established that both in its investment in developing a mold and changing the design, Lien maintained its pool business according to the custom and practice of the industry. We, therefore, conclude the district court did not err in its findings of fact and conclusions of law on the issues of the license agreement, statutory and common law trademark infringement, splashing and palming off, and the availability of the defense of licensee estoppel.