Court Opinion

ID: 9576608
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:26:18.500971+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:41.532914
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
Defendants King Mountain Tobacco Company, Inc., and Yakama Tribe members Delbert Wheeler and Richard “Kip” Ramsey allegedly infringed federal and state trademark rights of Philip Morris by selling cigarettes with packaging and designs that resemble those of Philip Morris’s flagship Marlboro brand. Philip Morris sued the defendants in federal district court for trademark infringement. The defendants responded by suing Philip Morris in tribal court, seeking a declaratory judgment that their packaging, designs, and sales do not infringe.
The district court appears to have thought that sales both on and off the Yakama Reservation are at issue in this ease. The district court noted in its order granting the stay that “Defendants began selling King Mountain cigarettes to smoke shops on the Yakama Reservation in January 2006” and later began to make off-reservation sales. The district court concluded that because Philip Morris’s federal court suit made “claims against tribal members whose conduct occurred on reservation lands ... there exists a colorable question of the existence of tribal court jurisdiction in this case over Philip Morris.”
The panel majority makes clear, however, that sales by defendants of King Mountain cigarettes on the Yakama Reservation are not at issue. It writes, “Philip Morris’s complaint does not allege claims based on King Mountain’s sales of its cigarettes on the Yakama Reservation, although there are passing references to such sales in later pleadings.” Maj. op. at 945 n. 2. Because the only sales at issue took place off the Yakama Reservation, the question in this appeal is straightforward and quite narrow: Does the Yakama Tribal Court have colorable jurisdiction to decide whether off-reservation sales by tribal member defendants infringe the Marlboro trademark?
The panel majority answers, correctly, that the tribal court does not have color-able jurisdiction. The answer is so clear that the majority could have written a simple opinion, or even an unpublished memorandum disposition, so holding. Instead, it has written an extended opinion *946containing a great deal of dicta. I respectfully decline to join the opinion, though I concur in the judgment.