Seventh Circuit Questions Usefulness of Trademark Surveys

CrackerBarrelThe Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (CBOCS) is a well known chain of restaurants. Kraft is a well-known manufacturer of food products sold in grocery stores, including a variety of packaged cheeses. Some of the packaged cheeses are sold under the trademark “Cracker Barrel.” Kraft sued CBOCS when it discovered that CBOCS planned to sell food products, such as packaged hams, in grocery stores under its logo, “Cracker Barrel Old Country Store.” Kraft Foods v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, No. 13-2559 (7th Cir. 2013).

Kraft objected only to the sale of products under the mark “Cracker Barrel Old Country Store” in grocery stores. It did not object to the sale of such products in the CBOCS restaurants or online. The district court granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting CBOCS from selling food products under the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store mark in grocery stores. The Seventh Circuit Appeals court agreed and upheld the injunction.

The 7th Circuit strongly questioned the usefulness of surveys in trademark lawsuits. Generally in a trademark dispute the question is whether there is a likelihood that the consumer would be confused to believe that the product/service of the junior user originates from the same source as the senior user’s product/service. One piece of evidence that a party may put forth is a survey of relevant consumers for showing whether confusion is likely.

Expensive Surveys
The problem with survey’s, aside from the issues identified by the Court, is that they can be expensive. An expert must be hired. The expert must plan a survey relevant to the case. The survey must be conducted. Then the expert must prepare a report with conclusions from the survey. Then the other party has the right to depose and otherwise attack the survey and its conclusions. All of the expert cost associated with surveys can total from $20,000 to over six figures depending on the case.

The Opportunity to Forgo Surveying
The court’s negative view of the value of surveys, as explained below, is helpful for litigants with limited budgets. If a litigant can dispense with the need to conduct surveys, the litigant can reduce costs substantially. Yet, forgoing evidence that could be supportive of the party’s position is always a risk. However, a party may decide to forgo a survey, particularly in the 7th Circuit in view of this Kraft Foods case.

General Problems with Surveys
The court started off with an overview of the problems with relying on surveys in trademark cases. The court stated that “Consumer surveys conducted by party-hired expert witness are prone to bias.” Citing several academic articles, the court continued, “There is such a wide choice of survey designs, none foolproof, involving such issues as sample selection and size, presentation of the allegedly confusing products to the consumers involved in the survey, and phrasing of questions in a way that is intended to elicit the surveyor’s desired response— confusion or lack thereof—from the survey respondents.”

Further referring to the academic articles, the court stated, “Among the problems identified by the academic literature are the following: when a consumers is a survey respondent, this changes the normal environment in which he or she encounters, compares, and reacts to trademarks; a survey that produces results contrary to the interest of the party that sponsored the survey may be suppressed and thus never become a part of the trial record; and the expert witnesses who conduct surveys in aid of litigation are likely to be biased in favor of the party that hired and is paying them, usually generously.”

The court concluded that generally, “All too often experts abandon objectivity and become advocates for the side that hired them.” This makes logical sense. A party will not hire an expert to give them a conclusion that damages the party’s position.

Professional Expert Witnesses
Turing the the survey in the Kraft Foods case, the court noted that Kraft’s Expert, Mr. Poret, appeared to be “a professional expert witness.” The court said that it would not hold this against him. However noting that Poret appears to be a professional expert witness implies a negative connotation. This appears especially evident when read in context with the court’s citation to academic literature to support the proposition that too often become advocates for the side that hired them.

Kraft Survey Problems
The Poret survey was conducted online via email. Poret emailed photos of CBOCS sliced spiral hams to 300 american consumer of whole-ham products and then asked in the email whether the company that makes ham also makes other products, and if so what products. About a quarter of the respondents said the company makes cheese. However the court was not convinced by this result noting that consumers could have guessed that the company makes other products because many companies have multiple product lines. Then the consumer could have guessed that the company made cheese.

Next, Poret showed “a control group of 100 respondents essentially the same ham, but made by Smithfield—and none of these respondents said that Smithfield also makes cheese.” The court noted that “Poret inferred that the name ‘Cracker Barrel’ on the ham shown to the 300 respondents had triggered their recollection of Cracker Barrel cheese, rather than the word ‘ham’ being the trigger.” The court found that the relevance of this conclusion was obscure. The court stated, “Kraft’s concern is not that people will think that Cracker Barrel cheeses are made by CBOCS but that they will think that CBOCS ham is made by Kraft, in which event if they have a bad experience with the ham they’ll blame Kraft.”

Validity of Online Surveys Questioned
Also the court question the validity of online surveys when drawing conclusions about products purchased in person in a store. The court said, “it’s very difficult to compare people’s reactions to photographs shown to them online by a survey company to their reactions to products they are looking at in a grocery store and trying to decide whether to buy.” The court continued, “The contexts are radically different, and the stakes much higher when actual shopping decisions have to be made (because that means parting with money), which may influence responses.” Online surveys are less expensive than in-person in-store surveys. However, this opinion counsels away from using online surveys when the products at issue are purchased in-person in a retail location.

Side-by-Side Statististical Sales Data Also Questioned
The court proposed using statistical sales data as an alternative to a survey. But then concluded that such statistical sales data would likely lack reliability necessary to support a basis to refuse “granting preliminary injunctions in trademark cases.” The proposed statistical data process would involve analyzing the actual sales of the two products at issue in the real world. “…in some of [the stores] Kraft Cracker Barrel cheese would have been displayed side by side with CBOCS hams plus similar meat products sold at comparable prices, while in other stores the cheese and hams would have been displayed in different areas of the store, and still other grocery stores would have carried CBOCS hams but not Kraft Cracker Barrel cheese.” The court stated that by examining the greater sales, if any, that “CBOCS hams obtained by proximity to the Kraft Cracker Barrel label, an expert witness might be able to estimate the extent of consumer confusion.” The greater boost in sales in those CBOCS hams in proximity to the Kraft Cracker Barrel cheese, the greater likely association of the CBOCS hams with the marker of the Cracker Barrel cheese. Still the court discounted this method in this scenario, stating, “nor have we such confidence in the reliability of such a study that we would think it an adequate basis for refusing to grant preliminary injunctions in trademark cases.”

Expert Testimony on Buying Habits And Consumer Psychology Suggested
There was one type of evidence that court would consider. The court noted that testimony of “experts on retail food products about the buying habits and psychology of consumers of inexpensive food products” would be illuminating in trademark cases. The court cited an academic article providing that “neither courts nor commentators have made any serious attempt to develop a framework for understanding the conditions that may affect the attention that can be expected to be given to a particular purchase.”

Conclusion
The courts criticism of trademark surveys is a benefit to litigants on a limited budget. While forgoing potentially favorable survey evidence is a risk, the opinion in this case provides authority for calling into question the other party’s survey conclusions.

Ensuring Strong Patent Enforcement Position Through Virtual Patent Marking

U.S. patent law encourages patent owners to mark products or services that are covered by at least one claim of a patent. Therefore patent marking is an important step in ensuring a strong patent enforcement position if infringement occurs. The America Invents Act now allows “virtual patent marking” as explained below.

Reason for Marking
Section 287 of Chapter 35 of the U.S. Code provides that if a patent owner fails to mark its patented invention, then the damages will be limited to those arising after the infringer was notified of the infringement. However, if the invention is marked, then the patent owner will be able to get damages back to the start of the infringement (subject to any applicable statute of limitations).

Therefore, lets see what happens if the invention is not marked. Assume that an infringer starts infringing your patent five years ago, but you only discovered the infringement today and thereafter quickly sent the infringer a demand letter notifying the infringer of the infringement. Lets assume that the sales over the last 5 years resulted in 3 million dollars in recoverable patent infringement damages. Since the invention was not marked, the patent owner would only be able to recover damages arising after the infringer received the infringement demand letter, and not the 3 million dollars accruing over the last 5 years.

Therefore, marking has an impact on the damages that are recoverable for infringement. Also, whether the invention was marked impacts how a infringer might react to a claim of infringement. If the infringer has a liability of 3 million dollars in damages the infringer is obviously in an inferior bargaining position in terms of settlement as compared to if the infringer as no monetary liability because the invention was not marked.

Who Should Mark
Those that are making, offering for sale, or selling within the United States any patented article or importing any patented article into the United States should mark. Therefore if you are not commercializing your invention by the above activities, you are not subject to the damages limitations of section 287.

How to Mark
Marking notice may be given either by (1) fixing on the product the word “patent” or the abbreviation “pat.”, together with the number of the patent, or (2) by fixing thereon the word “patent” or the abbreviation “pat.” together with an address of a posting on the Internet, accessible to the public without charge for accessing the address, that associates the patented article with the number of the patent.

If from the character of the patent article, the product itself cannot be marked, then it is permissible to fix the above notice on a label attached to the product or to the package of the product.

Virtual Marking
As provided above, you can provide notice by listing a internet address together with the word patent or pat. where the resulting internet webpage provides an association between each patented article and the corresponding number of the patent. In this way you can quickly and easily update the marking of products with newly issued patents by updating the patent marking webpage to show the patents that apply to the corresponding product. This alleviates the need to change molds or packaging as new patents are issued.

Routinely Updated. The webpage should be updated whenever a patent status changes, including when a patent issues and if a court or the USPTO invalidates or narrows the patent in a way that would change whether the corresponding product is covered by the patent.

Availability. The webpage should be continuously available so that anyone trying to determine the patents covering a product/service will be able to have ready access to the webpage. Records of continuous webpage availability should be kept.

Change log. Further it would be best to keep a change log of the changes to the patent marking webpages so that the log shows the details of each change made to the webpage and the date that change was made. This change log is important to show when marking related to a given product/service or patent began on the webpage.

Published Applications. Published patent application and corresponding products may also be listed on the same or a different web page. When listing published patent application on the same page as issues patent, it should be clear that the published application are not issued patents. The benefit of listing published patent applications is that the webpage might provide actual notice that could allow for the recovery of royalties under provisional patent rights statute.