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Gene And Betty Hoot Case Summary

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The Burger King of Florida v. Gene and Betty Hoots of Matoon, IL. Case
The Hoots had remodeled a parking garage and turned it into a restaurant specializing in hamburgers, calling it, “Burger King." They registered Burger King with the state of Illinois as a trademark, only to learn later that Burger King was a federally registered trademark of Burger King of Florida. Unable to reach an agreement, the case went to federal court.
In a highly anticipated decision, the federal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that since Burger King of Florida had a federal registration, they had rights to the trademark anywhere in the United States except the area of Mattoon, where the Hoots had maintained previous authentic use. Therefore, the Hoots were allowed …show more content…

After plaintiffs opened a restaurant in Champaign, Illinois, defendants sued in the state court to restrain plaintiffs' use of the mark in Illinois. Plaintiffs then brought the federal suit, now before us, and the defendants counter-claimed for an injunction, charging plaintiffs with infringement of their Illinois trade mark.
The district court found that Burger King’s property right in the trademark was superior to Hoots’s because of the natural expansion of Burger King’s business throughout Illinois but that Hoots still had the right to use its trademark in the area in which it first adopted it innocently without notice of Burger King’s competing trademark. Hoots appealed.
The district court concluded, from the unchallenged findings, that plaintiffs' federal registration is prima facie evidence of the validity of the registration and ownership of the mark; that plaintiffs have both a common-law and a federal right in the mark superior to defendants' in the area of natural expansion of plaintiffs' enterprise which "logically included" all of Illinois, except where defendants had actually adopted and used the mark, innocently, i. e., without notice and in good faith; and that the defendants had adopted and continuously used the mark in the Mattoon area innocently and were entitled to protection in that

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