{"id":193,"date":"2017-02-05T07:59:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T12:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/?p=193"},"modified":"2017-02-05T07:59:47","modified_gmt":"2017-02-05T12:59:47","slug":"demand-letters-protected-by-the-noerr-pennington-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"Demand Letters Protected by the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently in <em>Silverhorse Racing LLC v. Ford Motor Co.<\/em>, [Civ. Action No. 6:16-cv-00053] (M.D.Fla. January 30, 2017) the Court\u00a0granted Ford Summary Judgment that the act of sending Demand Letters to Silverhorse&#8217;s distributors was litigation contact that is immunized from civil liability under the<em> Noerr-Pennington<\/em> doctrine.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Conway found that the doctrine extends not only to petitioning of the judicial branch (i.e., filing a lawsuit), but also to acts reasonably attendant to litigation, such as demand letters. \u00a0Judge Conway instructed, however, that the <em>Noerr<\/em> doctrine is not absolute, and that to receive immunity the acts must no fall within the sham exception &#8212; i.e., the litigation activity must be genuine.<\/p>\n<p>Silverhorse argued that because it had defenses to Ford&#8217;s claims, the demand letters asserting the claims were a sham. \u00a0Judge Conway was unpersuaded. \u00a0She said that the subjective strength of the claims are not determinative of whether the letters were a sham. \u00a0Because there was no evidence that Ford&#8217;s letters were objectively baseless, the Court did not have to examine Ford&#8217;s subjective intent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently in Silverhorse Racing LLC v. Ford Motor Co., [Civ. Action No. 6:16-cv-00053] (M.D.Fla. January 30, 2017) the Court\u00a0granted Ford Summary Judgment that the act of sending Demand Letters to Silverhorse&#8217;s distributors was litigation contact that is immunized from civil &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/?p=193\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}