Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532 U.S. 424, 5 (2001)

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428

COOPER INDUSTRIES, INC. v. LEATHERMAN TOOL GROUP, INC.

Opinion of the Court

tured. A Cooper employee created a ToolZall "mock-up" by grinding the Leatherman trademark from handles and pliers of a PST and substituting the unique fastenings that were to be used on the ToolZall. At least one of the photographs was retouched to remove a curved indentation where the Leatherman trademark had been. The photographs were used, not only at the trade show, which normally draws an audience of over 70,000 people, but also in the marketing materials and catalogs used by Cooper's sales force throughout the United States. Cooper also distributed a touched-up line drawing of a PST to its international sales representatives.2

Shortly after the trade show, Leatherman filed this action asserting claims of trade-dress infringement, unfair competition, and false advertising under § 43(a) of the Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act), 60 Stat. 441, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1125(a) (1994 ed. and Supp. V), and a common-law claim of unfair competition for advertising and selling an "imitation" of the PST. In December 1996, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction prohibiting Cooper from marketing the ToolZall and from using pictures of the modified PST in its advertising. Cooper withdrew the original ToolZall from the market and developed a new model with plastic coated handles that differed from the PST. In November 1996, it had anticipatorily sent a notice to its sales personnel ordering a recall of all promotional materials containing pictures of the PST, but it did not attempt to retrieve the materials it had sent to its customers until the following April. As a result, the offending promotional materials continued to appear in catalogs and advertisements well into 1997.

After a trial conducted in October 1997, the jury returned a verdict that answered several special interrogato-2 To "create" the drawing, a Cooper manager photocopied a line-art drawing of a PST and then "whited out" Leatherman's trademark. App. 43-47.

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