Border Enforcement

Border Enforcement

Re: injuctions as a financial lever.

If you're ever bored, read through the filings of SFC's successful permanent injunction against Westinghouse in the so-called “BusyBox case” regarding Westinghouse's copyleft violations on televisions. The individual who ran the company was successful in using a California-based alternative to full-on bankruptcy that allowed the following:

• Copyleft-violating Company A (using Westinghouse trademark via licensing agreement and Defendant vs. SFC and Erik Anderson) dissolves on a Friday afternoon in California.
• Company A' incorporates that same Friday. CEO is the brother of the CEO of Company A.
• Company A' on the following Monday files as a trusted receivership of all liabilities and assets of Company A. It is rubber-stamped.
• Company A' CEO in short order (IIRC, same week) hires Company A CEO as a mundane employee.
• Company A files with the SDNY Federal district court that it is insolvent, will not ship new product, and therefore complies with the injunction.
• Company A law firm (L) files a motion in SDNY that Company A cannot pay their bills and asks the SDNY judge to relieve them as counsel. Motion is granted.
• Company A' begins within weeks to:
  • receive a trademark license from Westinghouse for TVs.
  • produce a new model of TV.
• Law Firm L emails SFC to tell us they “are representing a new company and would love to work with us on compliance”. Discussions go nowhere.
• SFC files a motion with the SDNY to demand that the Court consider Company A' a successor in interest and bound by the injunction.
• The 🤬'ing MPEG-LA joins SFC in its motion to the SDNY asking that Company A' be liable for patent licensing fees owed to MPEG-LA by Company A.
• SDNY rules that they aren't going to intervene with and/or interpret California state corporate law, and dismisses the motions.

If you didn't know why I don't focus my work on injunction-based enforcement mechanisms anymore, now you know.