In November 2009, the Central District of California denied the prevailing defendant’s motion for attorney’s fees.
The court found plaintiff’s claims couldn’t have been groundless when it survived defendant’s motion for summary judgment. It reasoned: “Given the standard for summary judgment, the Court is not willing to find that a party has litigated a groundless or unreasonable case when the Court itself found that there were genuine issues of fact on all disputed claims. Indeed, what wold have been ‘exceptional’ is if Plaintiff had unilaterally stopped litigating the case after the Court made such a finding.”
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit held that wasn’t a good basis to deny defendant’s request.
“In denying Fortune’s motion for attorney’s fees under the Copyright and Lanham Acts, the district court gave undue weight to the fact that Tokidoki survived Fortune’s motion for summary judgment. The summary judgment ruling should have been afforded little or no weight in deciding whether to award fees, given that many of the factual contentions upon which Tokidoki relied at the summary judgment stage were not borne out at trial.”
The Ninth Circuit vacated the denial of fees and remanded to the district court “to reconsider Fortune’s motion, without regard to the court’s summary judgment ruling,” though it expressed no opinion about whether a fees award was appropriate.
The case cite is Tokidoki, LLC v. Fortune Dynamic, Inc., 2011 WL 2036466, Nos. 09–56388, 10–55661 (9th Cir. May 25, 2011).