Rosetta Stone Still Awaiting Memorandum Order in Trademark Suit Against Google

Although nearly three months have passed since Judge Lee granted Google’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed Rosetta Stone’s trademark infringement suit against the search engine, the parties still await Judge Lee’s accompanying Memorandum Order.

Rosetta Stone had argued that Google’s use of its trademarks to trigger sponsored ads by known counterfeiters of Rosetta Stone products, despite Rosetta Stone’s repeated notices to Google of such counterfeit products, was infringing.  Google had countered that, in short, it had no particular responsibility to independently determine the authenticity of the products advertised through AdWords.

Rosetta Stone indicated at the time of Judge Lee’s decision that it would consider an appeal to the Fourth Circuit upon reading Judge Lee’s Memorandum.  In June, its general counsel intimated that an appeal is still planned.

In the interim, there have been a couple of developments.

On May 5, Rosetta Stone filed objections in response to Magistrate Judge Buchanan’s denial of its motion for sanctions against Google for having failed to timely produce one thousand responsive documents pursuant to a February 4, 2010 order.  Rosetta Stone claims that Judge Buchanan’s denial was “based on her ... belief that Rosetta Stone would have an opportunity to utilize the late-produced documents [at trial] to demonstrate Google’s liability,” and that there would be no prejudice to Rosetta Stone.  As Rosetta Stone maintains in its filed objection, however, it was precluded from using the documents by Judge Lee’s dismissal of the case on summary judgment.

We previously blogged about the Rosetta Stone v. Google case here.