芝加哥法官开始反对知识产权案件Schedule A（SAD）诉讼

转自路透社作者Alison Frankel

过去十年来，芝加哥联邦法院一直是一种特殊知识产权诉讼的中心，一位著名法学教授称之为一种“滥用”的计谋，不正当地利用程序规则和司法系统对知识产权所有者的尊重。

圣克拉拉大学法学院Eric Goldman教授和芝加哥肯特法学院Sarah Burstein教授如此描述这种计谋：一名原告在一起案件中同时起诉数十名甚至数百名涉嫌侵权的被告，指控所有被告合谋经营，并向法院申请必须立即禁止其电商经营。

据两位教授称，这些案件的一个主要特点是保密性：被告（通常是在亚马逊、eBay、Etsy 和其他美国平台上经营电商的外国公司）会被列在单独密封的Schedule A中。（这就是为什么Goldman教授将这些案件称为“Schedule A Defendant”或 SAD 诉讼。）

Burstein教授称，大多数被告甚至不知道自己已被起诉，直到法官下达临时禁令(TRO)，冻结他们的美国银行账户并关闭他们的电商店铺。Burstein说，被告届时别无选择，只能同意（金额未披露的）和解。

伊利诺伊州北区法院每年都会受理数百起 SAD 诉讼。 Steven Seeger法官在去年12月的一项判决中称，这些案件“如潮水般涌来”，该判决驳回了佐罗制片公司秘密申请针对310名被告的TRO请求。Seeger法官表示，位于芝加哥的联邦法院已成为SAD诉讼的“装配线”，这些案件要求对那些不知道自己已被列入诉讼名单的被告单方面签发TRO。

Burstein教授即将在《哈佛法律评论》发表文章，讨论商标SAD诉讼中的原告如何利用法官对造假者的蔑视。她表示，这些案件是“知识产权诉讼中最重要且被忽视的现象”。

但芝加哥的法官们最近似乎开始反对SAD诉讼。

我们看最近几周的进展：11月4日， John Blakey法官驳回了一起针对18名被告的版权侵权案；根据他对原告指控的解读，这些被告彼此之间没有关联。11月12日，Sunil Harjani 法官驳回了另一名版权所有者提出的针对59名被告的TRO动议，认为原告的指控未能满足诉的合并要求。

而在11月18日，Jeremy Daniel法官驳回了丰田汽车针对103名被告的商标侵权案，他认为这些被告在单一诉讼中被错误合并。

Daniel法官的判决尤其引人注目，因为法官给了原告的代理律所Greer, Burns & Crain （GBC律所）一个机会来简要说明诉的合并问题。Daniel法官在10月18日的命令中表达了他的担忧，即丰田与他之前受理的案件中的其他SAD原告一样，未能充足指控被告合谋经营，要求GBC律所提交法律摘要进行补充论证。（Goldman教授称，本月早些时候，Daniel法官在另一起SAD案件中发布了类似的命令。该案的原告自愿撤诉，没有提交有关诉的合并的合理性的补充论证。）

签署丰田10月25日有关诉的合并的法律摘要的四名GBC律师均未回复我的邮件问询。但他们提交的摘要显示，被告都是“利用互联网提供的匿名性和大规模影响力的海外造假者”的“群体”的一部分。

GBC的诉讼摘要称，要求丰田对每个涉嫌侵权者单独提起诉讼，忽视了这些大规模攻击对公司知识产权的影响。此外，GBC指出，过去十年来，芝加哥和其他几处的联邦法官（包括位于曼哈顿和迈阿密的联邦法院）允许数百名原告持续提起SAD诉讼同时起诉诸多电商，而这些店铺的关联性仅因其均涉嫌侵权。

丰田的“群体”论据主要依据2020年Thomas Durkin法官在Bose提起的SAD诉讼中做出的一项判决。Durkin法官认定，Bose（与丰田一样，由GBC代理）充分指控 17 名中国被告与原告遭受的大规模伤害有关。Durkin总结道：“伤害的总体——群体——才是有害的，Bose 因此而寻求庇护。”

Daniel法官在周一的丰田案判决中驳斥了这一理由，他将丰田案的涉嫌侵权者比作在音乐会场馆外兜售未经授权商品的商贩。Daniel表示，尽管商贩可能以类似的价格出售类似的商品，但他们并没有共谋；他们是竞争对手，而不是共谋者——联邦程序规则不允许单独行动的竞争对手合并在一起诉讼中。

Blakey, Harjani和Daniel几位法官最近的判决，并不是伊利诺伊北区法院拒绝SAD诉讼合并的先例。正如我所提到的，Seeger法官在2023年12月的佐罗案中对这些诉讼进行了严厉批评。去年5月，Joan Gottschall法官拒绝了Bose的请求，她裁定四起不同侵权诉讼中的原告不正当地合并了仅因其所谓侵权而关联的被告。Gottschall引用了另外两名芝加哥联邦法官的话，他们此前也对SAD诉讼合并持怀疑态度。

但Burstein教授表示，最近的裁决似乎表明，至少在芝加哥的联邦法官中，对SAD诉讼的抵制情绪日益高涨。

由于这些案件通常是秘密诉讼并在庭外和解，因此SAD诉讼“一直在暗中进行”，Burstein说。“终于有法官开始站出来发声，至少让我们开始看到一些阻力。”

Chicago judges are starting to push back against 'SAD' scheme in IP cases 

By Alison Frankel

Nov 19 (Reuters) - For the last decade, Chicago federal court has been the hub of a peculiar brand of intellectual property litigation that one prominent law professor has dubbed, opens new tab an “abusive” scheme to exploit procedural rules and capitalize on judicial deference to IP owners.

The strategy, as described by both Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman and Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Sarah Burstein, is for a lone plaintiff to join dozens or even hundreds of alleged infringers or counterfeiters in a single lawsuit alleging that all of the defendants are operating in concert and must be immediately enjoined from operating internet storefronts.

A key feature of the cases, according to the law professors, is secrecy: The lawsuits typically list defendants — usually foreign companies operating online storefronts on Amazon, eBay, Etsy and other U.S. platforms — in a separate schedule filed under seal. (That’s why Goldman calls these cases “Schedule A defendant,” or SAD, lawsuits.)

Most of the defendants, Burstein told me, do not even know they have been sued until judges have granted temporary restraining orders that freeze their U.S. bank accounts and shutter their internet storefronts. By then, Burstein said, defendants have little choice but agree to (undisclosed) settlements.

Hundreds of Schedule A cases are filed every year in Chicago federal court, in what U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger described as “a torrent” in a ruling, opens new tab last December denying Zorro Production’s request to litigate its motion for a restraining order against 310 defendants in secret. Seeger said the Chicago federal courthouse had become “an assembly line” for Schedule A cases requesting ex parte restraining orders against defendants that have no idea they've been named in lawsuits.

Burstein, who has written a forthcoming Harvard Law Review article, opens new tab discussing how trademark plaintiffs in Schedule A lawsuits take advantage of judges' disdain for counterfeiters, said these cases are “the most important phenomenon in IP litigation that no one is paying attention to.”

But Chicago judges recently seem to have begun to push back against Schedule A cases.

Just look at the last few weeks. On Nov. 4, U.S. District Judge John Blakey dismissed, opens new tab a copyright infringement case against 18 defendants that, by his reading of the plaintiff's allegations, were not related to each other. On Nov. 12, U.S. District Judge Sunil Harjani denied, opens new tab a different copyright owner's motion for a temporary restraining order against 59 defendants, holding that the plaintiff failed to allege a relationship among the defendants that would justify their joinder in a single lawsuit.

Then on Monday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Daniel tossed Toyota Motor Sales' Schedule A trademark infringement case against 103 defendants that he found to have been misjoined in a single lawsuit.

The Daniel decision is especially notable because the judge gave plaintiffs lawyers at Greer, Burns & Crain a chance to brief the joinder question. Daniel requested the supplemental brief in an Oct. 18 order, registering his concern that Toyota, like other Schedule A plaintiffs in cases before him, had failed to allege any concerted action by defendants. (Earlier this month, as Santa Clara law professor Goldman has reported, opens new tab, Daniel issued a similar order in a different Schedule A case. The plaintiff in that case voluntarily dismissed its suit without submitting the requested supplemental brief justifying joinder.)

None of the four Greer Burns lawyers who signed Toyota's Oct. 25 brief addressing Daniel’s joinder concerns responded to my email query. But their brief argued that the defendants were all part of a “swarm” of “offshore internet-based counterfeiters who exploit the anonymity and mass reach afforded by the internet."

Requiring Toyota to file individual lawsuits against each alleged infringer, the brief said, would defy the impact of these sprawling attacks on the company’s intellectual property rights. Moreover, Greer Burns pointed out, federal judges in Chicago and several other venues (including federal courts in Manhattan and Miami) have, over the last decade, allowed hundreds of plaintiffs to proceed with lawsuits joining multiple anonymous internet storefronts linked only by their alleged infringement.

Toyota’s swarm argument relied heavily on a 2020 decision, opens new tab by U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin of Chicago in a Schedule A counterfeiting case filed by Bose Corp. Durkin ruled that Bose, which, like Toyota, was represented by Greer Burns, adequately alleged that 17 Chinese defendants were linked by the mass harm they caused the company. "It is the injuries in the aggregate — the swarm — that is harmful and from which Bose seeks shelter,” Durkin concluded.

Daniel rejected that rationale in Monday’s Toyota decision, comparing the alleged infringers in Toyota's Schedule A to vendors hawking unauthorized merch outside of concert venues. Though vendors might be selling similar wares at similar prices, Daniel said, they are not acting in coordination with each other. They are competitors, he said, not conspirators — and federal procedural rules do not permit competitors acting on their own to be joined in a single lawsuit.

The recent rulings by Blakey, Harjani and Daniel are not the first to deny joinder in Schedule A cases in Chicago. As I mentioned, Seeger was fairly scathing about these lawsuits in his December 2023 Zorro decision. And last May, U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall of Chicago declined, opens new tab to follow Bose when she ruled that plaintiffs in four different infringement lawsuits had improperly joined defendants linked only by their purported infringement. Gottschall, in turn, cited two other Chicago trial judges who had previously cast a skeptical eye on Schedule A joinder.

But Chicago-Kent law professor Burstein said the recent rulings seem to signal mounting resistance, at least among Chicago federal judges, to Schedule A cases.

Because these cases were often litigated in secret and settled outside of court, Schedule A lawsuits “were operating in the shadows,” Burstein said. “Finally some judges started speaking up [and] now we are starting to see pushback.”

原文链接: 

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/column-chicago-judges-are-starting-push-back-against-sad-scheme-ip-cases-2024-11-19/