Beauty pageant files TM suit against competitor
A beauty pageant in the US has accused an ex-employee and competitor of IP misappropriation.
Mrs United States National Pageant (Mrs USNP) filed its lawsuit at the US District Court for the Western District of New York on Monday, August 13.
American beauty competition Mrs USNP was established to host married women. It is part of the well-known “Miss United States Pageant”, which has been held annually since 1952. Other divisions of the pageant include Pre-Teen, Junior Teen, and Teen.
Mrs USNP owns the registered trademarks associated with the competition, including ‘Mrs. United States’ (number 2,083,350) and ‘Mrs. United States National Pageant’ (number 1,851,722), as well as the domain names associated with the competitions, including www.mrsunitedstates.com.
According to the suit, Stephanie Williams worked with the Mrs USNP pageant for ten years as a director. In 2016, Mrs USNP granted Williams a licence for limited use of certain trademarks.
In 2017, Mrs USNP entered into a licensing agreement with Williams and her company Crown Garland, which was the official producer of the Miss US pageants. Under the agreement, the licensees received limited rights to use the ‘Mrs. United States’ trademark.
Both agreements ended in July 2018, but Williams allegedly refused to “return” the IP rights.
Mrs USNP alleged that Williams and Crown began working on behalf of organisations that produce pageants in direct competition with Mrs USNP before the end of the agreements, in violation of them.
The suit said Williams “actively worked to disparage” Mrs USNP and its trademarks through “inappropriately” promoting her new business endeavour. She also allegedly displayed Crown’s logo rather than Mrs USNP’s marks in marketing material, in violation of the licensing agreements
Williams started working with Cosmos International Pageants and Miss Arnold Teen Fitness Pageant in 2017, “solely for the purpose of running a pageant system that competes with plaintiff with nearly identical state and national pageants and divisions,” Mrs USNP claimed.
Mrs USNP alleged that Williams verbally advertised the competition pageants to those attending the Mrs USNP events and “converted” the Mrs USNP social media pages to represent Cosmos’ name and image.
Williams also failed to return the administrative rights to all the domain names linked to the pageants, and removed all pages allowing potential contestants to sign up.
Finally, Williams failed to use the approved supplier to purchase the crown and sash awarded to winning contestants of Mrs USNP 2018, according to Mrs USNP, and instead provided the contestants with “lesser quality crowns and sashes that did not contain the approved designs and logos”.
Williams, Crown Garland, and Cosmos are listed as defendants in the complaint.
Mrs USNP has asked the court to order a disgorgement of the defendants’ profits, triple damages, and attorneys’ fees for trademark infringement, unfair competition, trade secrets theft, and various contractual and tortuous offences.
(Correction at 17:20 BST: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Mrs USNP was previously owned by President Donald Trump)
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.
Today's top stories
Partial success for Hugo Boss in TM opposition at UKIPO
