IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—D. Mass.: Footwear complaint does not get beyond the starting line, (May 11, 2023)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

The shoe designer lumped two former business partners together in his lawsuit.

A footwear designer who claimed that two former business partners purloined his shoe designs did not come close to stating a claim because he failed to make specific assertions about each defendant, the federal court for Boston has held. The court, in underscoring that a plaintiff in a copyright infringement lawsuit may not “broadly cast liability on the part of all defendants,” also noted that the designer did not make any specific factual assertions supporting his copyright claim other than a “formulaic recitation” of the elements of the cause of action (Kraljevich v. Courser Athletics, Inc., May 9, 2023, Burroughs, A.).

The lawsuit arose out of the relationship between an artist, two business partners, and the footwear company that the three of them founded. Footwear designer and “true renegade renaissance man,” according to his profile that remains online at his former place of employment and current legal adversary, teamed up with Michael Petry and Laurie Spiro to form a company named Courser. But his time at the company—a self-described “sport-inspired luxury brand dedicated to combining the finest elements of fashion and performance”—was fleeting. By 2020, according to the complaint, his former business partners had started cutting him out of business meetings and eventually stopped paying his salary.

The footwear designer eventually came to believe, according to his complaint, that his former business partners had purloined his footwear designs and were advertising shoes that were similar in style to his own creations. He filed his lawsuit in late 2021, asserting claims of copyright infringement and breach of contract against the company as well as claims of secondary copyright infringement and breach of contract against the former business partners. After the designer’s claims against the company were settled, the former business partners moved to dismiss, leading to this opinion.

Failure to state a claim. The court easily granted the motion to dismiss. The reason had little to do with copyright law and more to do with basic principles of legal pleading. According to the complaint, the two former business partners “played a significant role in the direct infringement,” were each “a moving, active, conscious force” behind the company’s infringement, “directly participated in and contributed to” that infringement, and “substantially induced, caused, and materially contributed to” that infringement. But the complaint fell well short of stating a claim, the court found.

The court gave two reasons for this conclusion. For one thing, the court noted, the allegations “broadly cast liability on the part of all defendants,” without attributing specific actions to either one. “A plaintiff cannot lump multiple defendants together and must state clearly which defendant or defendants committed each of the alleged wrongful acts,” the court noted. Moreover, even overlooking this shortcoming, the court found, the complaint offered no meaningful factual allegations of copyright infringement and instead offered only “a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action,” the court noted. These “naked assertions, devoid of further factual enhancement,” the court observed, fell well short of basic pleading standards.

The Case is No. 22-cv-11430-ADB.

Attorneys: Jordan Daniel Greenberger (Firestone Greenberger PLLC) for John Kraljevich. Christopher Bopst (Goldberg Segalla, LLP) for Courser Athletics, Inc.

Companies: Courser Athletics, Inc.

Cases: Copyright MassachusettsNews GCNNews