Our runners-up this week are John Byron, Michael Dockterman and their team at Steptoe & Johnson for their work representing Level 4 Yoga, a portfolio company of private equity fund Level 5 Capital Partners. The Delaware Supreme Court this week upheld Steptoe's Chancery Court win requiring CorePower Yoga to buy 34 studios from Level 4 Yoga, a Corepower franchisee. CorePower sought to back out of the deal claiming that COVID-19 dynamics had caused Level 4 to deviate from operating its studios in the ordinary course of business. But after a trial late last year, Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights in March found CorePower couldn't show that the temporary closure of Level 4's studios met the definition of a "material adverse effect" in the underlying agreement under Delaware law. The  team that secured this week's affirmance also included Lisa Schmidt and Matt Perri of Richards, Layton & Finger, and Steptoe associates Cara Lawson, Betsy Zyrkowski, Lia Metreveli and Azar Alexander.

Shout out to Mark Goodman, Khelin Aiken and Christina Wong of Baker McKenzie. U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan last week dismissed with prejudice a class action against their client Mondelez claiming the company misleadingly labeled dark chocolate products as "cacao" instead of cocoa, a processed derivative of the cacao bean. "The two are equivalent as both are derived from the cacao plant," Liman wrote. "The ingredient list does not contain the word 'cacao' because the FDA regulations require the manufacturer to list 'cocoa powder' and 'chocolate liquor,' both forms of processed cacao, and does not have a separate requirement for 'cacao.'"

Shout out to a team at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner including partners Mark Sommers and Naresh Kilaru, and associate Rosie Norwood-Kelly. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board issued a decision last week in favor of Finnegan client Sony Group Corp., which was opposing a trademark application for "SoniStream" filed by Neil Campbell. The board found Sony's trademark is "exceedingly famous" and entitled to protection against dilution.