Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Clear View West, LLC (CVW) develops retractable window and door screens. In 2010, CVW’s owner Lezotte granted Samuel Steinberg and his company HIS exclusive distributorship rights for CVW products in Southern California, in exchange for which Steinberg performed services including running CLEARVIEW-related websites and advertising. After CVW acquired nationwide rights to the CLEARVIEW MARKS in 2016, Steinberg was appointed Director of Sales of CVW with access to all distributor sales and web data.
According to CVW’s First Amended Complaint, beginning in 2021 and continuing into 2023, Steinberg — while still serving as CVW’s Director of Sales — schemed to create a knock-off retractable screen line, rebrand CVW’s motorized screen as APOLLO, recruit CVW’s top distributors to leave CVW for APOLLO under non-disclosure agreements that hid the effort, and cut CVW out of the profits. After terminating his relationship with CVW in June 2023, Steinberg allegedly cut off CLEARVIEW websites and phone numbers, rerouted historical CLEARVIEW phone numbers to APOLLO offices, and redirected existing CLEARVIEW websites to APOLLO websites — causing customer confusion and lost business.
The First Amended Complaint asserts eleven counts against the Steinberg defendants: federal trademark infringement under 15 U.S.C. § 1114; unfair competition and false designation of origin under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a); common-law trademark infringement; California UCL violations; common-law unfair competition; breach of contract; breach of fiduciary duty; fraud; misappropriation of trade secrets under the federal DTSA and California Uniform Trade Secrets Act; breach of confidence; and interference with prospective economic relationships. The Steinberg defendants moved for judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c).
The Court’s Holding
Judge Susan Illston denied the motion in full.
Applying the Rule 12(c) standard from Hal Roach Studios v. Richard Feiner and Cafasso v. General Dynamics C4 Systems, which mirrors Rule 12(b)(6) under Twombly and Iqbal, the court found that CVW’s detailed factual allegations plausibly stated each of the eleven causes of action.
The Lanham Act trademark and false-designation claims were supported by allegations that the Steinberg defendants used CLEARVIEW MARKS and logos to mislead customers, redirected CLEARVIEW phone numbers to APOLLO, and routed CLEARVIEW website traffic to APOLLO websites — creating textbook likelihood of consumer confusion. Common-law trademark infringement and California UCL claims followed the same factual pattern.
The breach of fiduciary duty claim was supported by Steinberg’s alleged Director of Sales role at CVW, which gave him access to confidential distributor data and put him in a position of trust that he allegedly violated by orchestrating distributor defections through secret NDAs. Fraud allegations supported the same conduct under California’s scienter standards. Trade-secret misappropriation under the DTSA and CUTSA was supported by allegations that Steinberg used CVW’s confidential distributor information, sales data, and web usage data to recruit CVW’s top distributors to APOLLO. Interference with prospective economic relationships, breach of confidence, and breach of contract claims also survived under the same factual matrix.
Each of the Steinberg defendants’ arguments — that the alleged conduct sounded only in contract, that trademark use was nominative, that there were no protectable trade secrets, that fiduciary duty did not extend to a distributor — failed at the pleading stage. The court emphasized that Rule 12(c) tests legal sufficiency of allegations taken as true, not factual disputes that belong at summary judgment or trial.
Key Takeaways
- Rebranding a former employer’s product line as a competing house brand and redirecting the former employer’s websites and phone numbers to the new brand is the kind of conduct that supports a robust suite of trademark, false-designation, unfair competition, and trade-secret claims under both federal and California law.
- A salesperson appointed to a senior role with access to confidential distributor data can owe fiduciary duties to the principal — a theory that survives Rule 12(c) when supported by detailed factual allegations.
- Customer confusion through redirected web traffic, rerouted phone numbers, and use of legacy marks is a textbook Lanham Act fact pattern that will routinely survive Rule 12(c).
- Defendants seeking to dismiss multi-count IP and contract suits at the pleadings stage should focus on legal infirmities (e.g., preemption, abstention, statute of limitations) rather than fact-bound arguments better suited to summary judgment.
- Plaintiffs should plead trade-secret misappropriation with sufficient detail about the protected information and the alleged misuse, but file-level identification at the discovery stage may follow.
Why It Matters
This case is a useful illustration of the integrated trademark/trade-secret/fiduciary-duty playbook that companies use when a senior insider walks out the door with intellectual property and customer relationships. By laying out detailed factual narratives across each count and tying them to specific marks, websites, phone numbers, and confidential information, plaintiffs can typically survive Rule 12(c) on all of them.
For tech and consumer-products defendants who acquire new brands from departing insiders, the case underscores how aggressively courts will let trademark, trade-secret, and fiduciary-duty claims proceed past the pleadings stage when the underlying conduct involves legacy mark use and confidential information access. The substantive merits will be litigated through discovery and dispositive motions, but the case is unlikely to be disposed of on the pleadings alone.