First up, Oren Warshavsky, Gerald Ferguson and their team at Baker & Hostetler get runners-up honors for securing a major trademark trial victory for luxury retailer Hermès International in an early test of how intellectual property laws apply to non-fungible tokens. After three days of deliberations, a federal jury in Manhattan this week found artist Mason Rothschild liable for trademark infringement, trademark dilution and cybersquatting for producing MetaBirkins NFTs featuring images of eccentrically decorated versions of Hermès’ high-end Birkin handbags. The jury hit Rothschild with $110,000 for profit and resale commissions and $23,000 in statutory damages for cybersquatting. The Baker & Hostetler team also included Jason Oliver, Deborah Wilcox, Heather McDonald, Terry Blaber, Ramon Cabrera, Mario Calabretta, Megan Corrigan, Jessica Fernandez, Lisa Gehman, Francesca Rogo, Len Rowe, Tori Stork and Kevin Wallace.
Our next runners-up are the antitrust litigators at Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick and Weil, Gotshal & Manges who scored a knockout win for Meta Platforms Inc. in the Federal Trade Commission’s bid to block Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited Inc., the developer behind the hit virtual reality fitness app Supernatural. After a seven-day evidentiary hearing, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California last week found that the FTC Meta couldn’t show that Meta would have entered the market for VR-dedicated fitness apps in competition with Within sans the merger. “First and foremost, although Meta has an abundance of VR personnel on hand, it lacks the capability to create fitness and workout content, a necessity for any fitness product or market,” the judge wrote. The Weil team advising Meta is led by Michael Moiseyev and Chantale Fiebig, and includes Bambo Obaro, Liz Ryan, Megan Granger and Eric Hochstadt. The Kellogg Hansen team included Mark Hansen, Aaron Panner, Geoffrey Klineberg and Evan Leo.
