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Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Ocean City's Seacrets Wins Federal Trademark Infringement Case, $50K in Damages

Ocean City's Seacrets has won a federal trademark infringement case against a competitor that was using a similar brand name to market its chain of luxury resorts. The decision in Baltimore's U.S. District Court awards the megaclub $50,000 in punitive damages and a permanent injunction protecting its 'Seacrets' trademark.

The lawsuit, filed two years ago, was an important one for the Maryland megaclub as its seeks to establish a franchise business and underscores its ambitions to expand outside the United States.

In 2008, the Coryn Group, which operates AMR Resorts, sued Seacrets after the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board canceled its federal registration of the trademark "Secrets" for its luxury resort chain in Mexico and the Caribbean. The board said the two brands were too similar.

Seacrets countersued for infringement and unfair competition and after an eight-day trial last November, a jury upheld its trademark and awarded it $1 in compensatory damages and $265,000 in punitive damages.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know why that guy suddenly decided to drop the ethics hearing against Joe Hall yesterday?
I'd be willing to bet there's more to the story and maybe one or more of his pals on the council is the one who should have ethics charges filed against them and it all came to light yesterday at the talks before the hearing.
There could be no other explanation and no other reason why the guy says he can't talk about it because he can talk about it if he wanted to so you know he's hiding something.

Anonymous said...

I agree, he dropped the charges for some reason. His name is Joe Groves incidently. He's got some kind of group going and my friend told me they acted so common and rude and uncivilized at one of the council meetings that it was dreadful. They were booing everyone who had an opposing opinion. It was on TV.