Experience
Below are some recent successes by the firm’s Virginia IP litigators:
Troutman Sanders Protects Prominent Trademark and Trade Dress
Robert Angle and Megan Rahman, assisted by Rob Brooke, Dabney Carr, Josh Heslinga, represented Lumber Liquidators, Inc., a nationally-known independent retailer and specialist in hardwood flooring products, in a trademark and trade dress infringement claim against Stone Mountain Carpet Mills, Inc. d/b/a The Floor Trader in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The crux of the dispute was over Floor Trader’s use of a tilted yellow and black mark that looks much like the well-known mark of Lumber Liquidators, both shown below:
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Lumber Liquidators defeated Floor Trader’s summary judgment motion and obtained summary judgment on Floor Trader’s counterclaims seeking to invalidate Lumber Liquidators’ trademarks. The case went to trial before Judge Henry Hudson for three days in the fall of 2009, before the parties reached a confidential settlement.
Troutman Sanders Wins Defense Verdict in Telecommunications Patent Case
Dabney Carr and Robert Angle successfully defended U.S. Cellular Corporation in a multi-defendant patent litigation suit involving wireless modem cards which plug into a port on a laptop computer to connect the computer to the internet, such as the examples shown below:
The plaintiff, DNT LLC, sought damages of up to $175 million for the 11.6 million wireless modem cards collectively sold by the defendants since the beginning of 2003.
After a nine-day jury trial in December, 2009 before Chief Judge James R. Spencer, the defendants obtained a resounding victory. The jury not only found that the defendants’ products did not infringe DNT’s patent, the jurors also returned a verdict that DNT’s patent was invalid for lack of enablement and written description and that the patent was invalid for obviousness.
For more information about the wide range of experience and other services provided by Troutman Sanders attorneys, please visit our website.
