Business Law Journal

October marks the opening of the new Supreme Court 2019-2020 term and there is one case in particular that trademark practitioners are anxiously awaiting for the Court to weigh in on to resolve a longstanding circuit split and definitively answer the question whether willful infringement is a prerequisite for an award of an infringer’s profits in an action for trademark infringement.

In Carriere v. Greene, et al., the California Court of Appeal recently reversed a trial court’s award of attorney’s fees to a plaintiff for “prevailing” on an appeal and on a post-trial motion because the plaintiff had lost at trial and was therefore not a prevailing party.  This holding clarified that even where a contractual attorney’s fees clause exists, only a prevailing party is allowed attorney’s fees — and only one side may be the prevailing party in the whole of a lawsuit.