Trademark Litigation Support: Tracing Online Commentary

Litigation Timeline

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Summary

Elysium assisted Shurtape in its trademark claim against 3M by tracing online posts demonstrating consumer confusion over similar-sounding trademarks from Shurtape and 3M. Elysium consultants found evidence supporting the admissibility of these otherwise anonymous Internet posts, showing that the posts were made by actual consumers with no other business relationship to the parties. Our work involved forensically preserving online evidence of the posts, tracing the posts’ authors, and obtaining written correspondence and/or formal declarations from several authors to prove the legitimacy of the posts. By consulting Elysium for technical expertise, Shurtape was able to support the argument that the court should allow online postings to be admitted as evidence in the case.

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3 Discovery

Elysium’s Chris Rucinski helped Shurtape identify relevant posts. So that they might be admitted as evidence, Chris set out to prove that the posts were legitimate (that is, human-authored) and written by consumers without financial ties to 3M or Shurtape. After selecting 17 posts to pursue, Elysium's team used variety of cross-referencing techniques in an attempt to find the authors of the posts. In several cases, we were able to trace forum usernames to posters' blogs, websites and phone numbers. Ultimately, Elysium found contact information for authors of 14 of the 17 posts, obtained written correspondence from ten authors asserting that the posts were legitimate, and obtained declarations from two authors of posts. Chris included the declarations in his expert report and was deposed on the issue for a day.

The case settled about four weeks after the deposition, prior to the beginning of trial.

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Christopher T. Rucinski

Managing Director

Testifying Expert, Consulting Expert
- T (617) 807-8534
- E christopher.rucinski@aon.com
- CV
- Bio

Shurtape Technologies, LLC v. 3M Company

Trademark Litigation Support: Tracing Online Commentary

Litigation Timeline

Pre-litigation

Beginning of Litigation

Discovery

Trial

Post-verdict

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