Busy Court Day for Marriott, its Robocalling Defendants
Marriott International seeks summary judgment against defendant Dynasty Marketing Group in its trademark infringement lawsuit to thwart robocallers from impersonating Marriott telemarketers, said its memorandum Friday (docket 1:21-cv-00610) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia in Alexandria. Capping a busy day for docket activity, another defendant, ResortCom International, filed dual motions for summary judgment against Marriott and to dismiss the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
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Marriott filed the action to address the unauthorized use of the Marriott mark through robocall campaigns “aimed to deceive the consuming public,” said its summary judgment memorandum against Dynasty. Conceding the “famousness” of the “iconic” Marriott mark, “direct infringer” Dynasty testified under oath, verified interrogatory responses, and produced documents conceding its unauthorized use of the Marriott mark in telemarketing, in advertisements on its website, and through multiple social media platforms “designed to trick consumers into purchasing vacation packages,” it said.
Dynasty admits it wasn't authorized to use the Marriott mark “and that it intended to capitalize on the mark and its goodwill for its commercial benefit,” said the memorandum. “Based on these undisputed facts, Marriott is entitled to summary judgment on its trademark infringement and trademark counterfeiting claims, it said. It asked the court to award statutory damages of $2 million for Dynasty’s “willful trademark counterfeiting and trademark infringement” and to enter a permanent injunction enjoining Dynasty and its affiliates from “engaging in or facilitating such conduct in any way,” it said.
It’s “undisputed” that Dynasty used lead generation to find customers by buying consumer lists from Facebook via data brokers, said the memorandum. Dynasty acquired about a million names and phone numbers, it said. Since 2020, Dynasty’s calls used an automated dialer to call individuals on those customer lists, it said.
ResortCom’s motion for summary judgment said Marriott alleges an “elaborate scheme” involving Mexican resorts, telemarketers, VoIP providers and others “to convince consumers to buy vacation packages at the Mexican resorts by misusing Marriott’s name and marks.” Marriott claims that ResortCom participated in the scheme, but ResortCom is a payment processing company that provides financial services to resorts,” said the defendant.
ResortCom doesn't “directly or indirectly perform or participate in any telemarketing or robocalls,” said the motion. Marriott nevertheless seeks to hold ResortCom accountable for the alleged Telemarketing Sales Rule violations by the other defendants, it said.
Marriott’s “theory of the case” against ResortCom was “strained and tenuous” from the start, said ResortCom. “Now that discovery is complete, it is clear that Marriott has no evidence to substantiate its alleged claims,” it said.
Marriott seeks to recover the full costs of its investigation, $756,000, from ResortCom, yet Marriott “cannot point to a single piece of evidence connecting a penny of those costs to ResortCom’s actions,” said ResortCom. “While Marriott paid two companies to gather data from robocalls and trace those robocalls to their source, Marriott cannot say that any of those efforts identified a robocall made by, or on behalf of, ResortCom’s current clients.”