"[S]he discovered an email in her junk email folder. It was the notice of the lawsuit in October from Comb’s attorney giving her 21 days to respond. She never got that chance and says she was in the hospital when the email was delivered to her junk mail folder and sent to an email address she says she rarely uses."
@design_law@sqfreak The whole news story is just f**kery on the masses. "The news" calls it copyright infringement but it is actually trademark. You can't even verify that the person that was sued was actually part of the case. Which brings up the question if the case is real. (My conspiracy theory) but for sure the news story is just propaganda playing a trick on the people. Probably got a lot of people to look at their joke folder.
"In the video, Combs said he spoke to Harness this morning and promised to send her $11,000 – double the amount the woman said was locked up in her Amazon account."
“'I was completely shocked when I saw this this morning,' Combs said in the video. '(It) makes me sick. This is not something that I would ever do. This is not the kind of person I am. I’m not greedy in any way, shape, or form. Money is the last thing on my mind.'”
"'So, we do have a company that goes after folks, only supposedly large corporations operating internationally that make millions and millions of dollars, making counterfeit T shirts, things of that nature run an illegal businesses,' Combs explained. 'And apparently this woman, Nicol, has somehow gotten wrapped into that.'"
@pyperkub@design_law Insane to me that a Plaintiff does not know what its counsel is doing. As a defense lawyer I don’t file for an extension of time without discussing it with my clients 🙃
So, none of these stories include the name of the case that Harness was involved in.
But on November 15, Judge Bucklo issued a default judgment in one of Combs' #ScheduleA cases that awards him "statutory damages from each of the Defaulting Defendants in the amount of two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000) for willful use of counterfeit Luke Combs Trademarks on products..."
If you're wondering why I can't just search for Ms. Harness by name, it's because people don't get sued by their legal names in these cases. They get sued using their storefront name as aliases.
One more note: The first story talks a bit about email service and suggests it's not allowed in Florida. It is. The federal court in Miami (SDFL) allows email service in these types of cases all the time.
@design_law@hewittlaw this is really interesting. We (a bunch of ex SAD's) wondered how much the Plaintiff knows.
Do attorneys do the ground work & then approach a client, say, look at this evidence, we can file a lawsuit & get X amount of money if you let us file? I've heard of another Plaintiff recently saying they were unaware that small sellers were being targetted as that was not what they wanted do.
Seems like something is amiss, albeit maybe restricted to certain players in the game
@SADLady@hewittlaw I don't know what these attorneys are telling the plaintiffs or what the plaintiffs actually know about how these cases work. But these quotes from Combs are striking and definitely raise some troubling questions.
@SADLady@design_law In some of the cases I think you can read between the lines when the copyrights are registered in 2023 for art that was created in 2010 and weeks after the registration clears, the mass litigation follows 🤔 For others, the Plaintiffs are obviously more involved - I have had cases where a patent owner had specific rules for who they’d allow to license the patent as part of the settlement, etc.
Some questions I'd love a reporter to ask Combs: How much have you (and your attorneys) made from these cases? Are you concerned about other fans getting caught in these nets?
Note also that Combs isn't the only celebrity to have filed this kind of case in Chicago. I've seen at least one filed by Harry Styles and, for all I know, there may be others. (There are so many of these that I'm only able to--loosely--track the DP ones.)
@SADLady Good question. In U.S. federal court litigation, an "answer" and an "appearance" are terms of art. Communicating with plaintiffs' counsel would not count as an "answer" (which is a document you file on the record, responding to the claims) or an "appearance" (which is where your attorney files a document on the record, telling the court they are your attorney). All a "default" means is that you didn't file an answer on time.
@design_law But email service is generally allowed in these cases under Rule 4(f)(3), which permits the court to order service on a person in a foreign country in any manner not prohibited by international agreement. No such equivalent exists for domestic defendants. Combs alleged on information and belief that defendants were all foreign persons (although now we know Harness wasn't), but there wasn't much in the way of evidence in the record.
@design_law It reminds me of the Schedule A plaintiff that argued to the court that the defendant was a foreign person, despite him appearing in court and declaring he was a US citizen living in Connecticut.
@sqfreak@design_law I have 3 cases right now for US sellers where I contacted the P attorney BEFORE service to say I would accept a waiver under 4(d) as my clients are US people so email service would be improper and they all just ignored that part of my email and included me on the mass "service" email.
@sqfreak@design_law I find in some cases, when a domest defendant replies to the summons saying they're domestic they dont always accept it. There was one recently, a defendant called Bigfinz had to full on defend about being a domestic defendant.
Also it's clear in the screenshot evidence on some cases, they can easily see some defendants address details if they actually looked at their own evidence. They outsource the evidence collection a lot of the time.
@SADLady@sqfreak@design_law This is always my argument - the addresses are posted on the seller page. Many of my clients have trademarks on the page where the USPTO has their current US address. It is just making the decision to move that service was improper. The costs quickly add up and if you are getting a low settlement offer, it is hard to ask sellers to fight anyway.
@SADLady@sqfreak@design_law And just from the attorney perspective, I recently took a case where I charged a low flat fee because I wanted to help. I've already clocked 4x the amount of time that I'm getting paid for. That's time away from my son, my other clients, etc. There's only so much you can do as one person when you are looking at a mountain of 💩
@hewittlaw@SADLady@sqfreak You're awesome but that sucks. Someone told me the other day that they weren't too worried about these kinds of cases because, in light of the few minor wins we've seen, they think more people will show up to defend. I mean, I hope so. But I don't think this person really recognized how stacked the economics are against defending, even when you have good defenses.
@design_law@SADLady@sqfreak I think there's an opportunity with the patent cases since they are now including real businesses with their own inventions and products - people who are used to hiring attorneys and want serious representation. The defense bar is just not set up to take cases on contingency because you are usually not winning damages. Your whole firm is structured on hourly or flat fee billing unlike Plaintiffs who have processes for contingency cases.
Add comment