P AND P IMPORTS LLC V. JOHNSON ENTERPRISES, LLC, No. 21-55013 (9th Cir. Aug 24 2022). Link to text of decision below.
Court refers to both litigants’ backyard “4 in a row” games as “CONNECT 4 knock-offs.” Ninth Circuit reverses defendant’s summary judgment. Too much evidence suggesting defendant’s intentional copying. Also: District Court had erroneously required evidence of secondary meaning linking product to this specific plaintiff, rather than evidence merely linking the product to a single, albeit anonymous, source.
Reversed and remanded.
There’s no finding as to functionality of trade dress.
Out of curiosity, I used “backyard Connect 4” as a search term in Amazon and got these results:
Text of P AND P IMPORTS LLC V. JOHNSON ENTERPRISES, LLC, No. 21-55013 (9th Cir. 2022): ninth circuit connect4 trade dress p and p johnson