Featured Audio Opinion
Featured Audio Opinion
Yankee Candle Company, Inc. v. Bridgewater Candle Company, LLC
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Brief Fact Summary
Yankee Candle Company claimed that Bridgewater candle Candle Company infringed Yankee's trade dress by copying their method of shelving, by copying the overall look and feel of a line of candles, and by copying the design of Yankee's merchandising catalog.
Rule of Law and Holding
Detachable labels, as product packaging, may be inherently distinctive. . . . A trade dress plaintiff seeking to protect a series or line of products faces a particularly difficult challenge, as it must show that the appearance of the several products is "sufficiently distinct and unique to merit protection." Proof of secondary meaning requires evidence that consumers associate the trade dress with the source.
Topics
Trademark - Distinctiveness
Featured Trial Video
Featured Trial Video
Pryde v. Virginia Tech
Trial in Montgomery County, VA
Description
This five day jury trial suit accuses University officials of gross negligence for not immediately warning students of two shootings that occurred in a dormitory at 7:15 am on the day of the school's mass shootings. By the time the school sent out an email alerting the campus of the shooting incident, two hours later, student gunman Seung-Hui Cho had already chained the doors shut to Norris Hall and killed 30 others and himself.
Practice Area
Negligence
Industry
Education
Featured Training Clip
Featured Training Clip
Trust Company of the West v. Jeffery Gundlach, et al.
Library: Evidence
Clip Analysis
The attorney lays a foundation for the admission of
a conversation into evidence and authenticates its contents before the jury.
The attorney is then able to ask the witness to testify as to the contents of
the conversation, which he does effectively. This clip also serves as an
example of FRE 803(3). The conversations admitted into evidence are out of
court statements that are being offered by counsel to prove the truth of the
matters they assert. However, the attorney is careful to pick out the
statements that speak to the witness's state of mind and thus, eliminates any
possibility for a FRE 803 hearsay objection.
FRE Article
8: Hearsay
Rule
803(3): Then-Existing Condition
