Intellectual Property Law

Failure to Attribute Fees to Lanham Act Claim Not Fatal to Fees Award

By Michael Atkins

EchoStar Satellite Corp. sued NDS Group PLC in the Central District of California, alleging that NDS had engaged in unfair business practices that compromised EchoStar’s security system, resulting in millions of dollars in damages.

After half a decade of litigation and a four week trial, the jury found for EchoStar in the amount of $45.69.

This, the district court determined, meant that NDS was the prevailing party, including on EchoStar’s Lanham Act claims. However, the court did not award any fees on those claims.

On appeal, the Ninth Circuit considered the fees award in light of the fact the district court did not carve out any time that NDS spent defending against EchoStar’s Lanham Act claims. However, that didn’t seem to bother the Ninth Circuit since the Lanham Act claims were intertwined with the core claims in the case and the district court reduced NDS’ claimed fees by 25%.

“The district court properly disallowed NDS’s request for attorneys’ fees under the Lanham Act but did not attempt to segregate the award of attorney time devoted to the defense of these claims. We note, however, that the Lanham Act claims were denied on a motion for summary judgment that devoted only two pages of briefing to them. Since the operative facts forming the basis of the Lanham Act claims were intertwined with the rest of EchoStar’s claims and required minimal legal argument to achieve their dismissal, we see no practical reason to ask the district court to attempt to separate out the attorneys’ fees attributable to them. We will instead consider them to fall within the 25% reduction of NDS’s fees ordered by the district court.”

The case cite is EchoStar Satellite Corp. v. NDS Group PLC, 2010 WL 3034603, Nos. 09-55005 and 09-55633 (Ninth Cir. Aug. 4, 2010).

Full post as published by Seattle Trademark Lawyer on August 10, 2010 (boomark / email).