How Old Bay Seasoning Sparked a Copyright Battle

Two days before Christmas 2024, the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) posted another final determination.
The case, 23-CCB-0211, is relatively straightforward in terms of its facts. It’s a dispute over a paragraph of marketing text that, according to the claimant, was used without his permission to promote a product.
However, the case takes several twists and turns. It includes a pro se claimant prevailing over a respondent who hired an attorney, a dispute over allegations of withheld evidence and serious questions over how much damages to award.
But perhaps most strange of all is how the case started: A dispute over a small container of Old Bay Seasoning.
So, while this case may not drastically alter the copyright landscape, it’s still an interesting one to follow and yet another case highlighting how the CCB is addressing some of the thornier issues brought before it.
Background of the Case
According to his claim, sometime before January 2018, Joseph Rooney developed the idea for a small container of Old Bay Seasoning that would clip onto a belt, bag or keychain. Dubbed the “OLD BAY Mini,” he took the idea to Old Bay’s distributor, McCormick.
McCormick introduced Rooney to Alexandra Von Paris, the owner of Route One Apparel. Route One is an officially licensed seller of Old Bay products, including passport covers, lanyards, pool floats and more.
Rooney and Route One worked together on the idea, with Rooney providing mock-ups and marketing text. However, the negotiations fell through. According to Rooney, Route One moved ahead with their version of the product dubbed the OLD BAY Mini.
On March 26, 2021, Rooney checked the Route One website and found the new product. However, he also noticed that they had used his marketing text, with only the name swapped out.
Rooney quickly registered the text with the US Copyright Office, with an effective registration date of July 21, 2022. He approached Route One about the dispute, but the two sides could not come to an agreement.
As such, Rooney filed the initial claim with the CCB in June 2023. That initial claim was rejected as non-compliant, so he filed an amended claim in October 2023. The CCB accepted that claim and moved forward with the case.
In their response, Route One listed eight separate defenses. This includes allegations that the work did not qualify for copyright protection, that the statute of limitations barred the claim, that the parties were joint authors and more.
However, the CCB ultimately dismissed all those defenses. The board sided with Rooney and awarded him $6,000 in damages.
That said, the facts of the case aren’t what make it interesting. What makes it interesting is how ugly it got along the way.
An Bitter Dispute
Route One filed its response to the claim in March 2024. Just one month later, Rooney filed a request for a conference related to alleged bad-faith conduct. According to Rooney, the attorneys representing Route One sent him various direct emails that he felt were disrespectful, threatening, and inappropriate.
In their response, Route One’s representatives accused Rooney of starting the exchange he claimed was threatening. They also claimed that, though Rooney does not have an attorney listed, he had made statements that he had counsel assisting him. They further argued that the alleged threats were primarily misunderstandings of legal terms they had used.
However, even as that was being addressed, Rooney requested a conference to address a discovery dispute. Route One argued that Rooney wasn’t entitled to some discovery items the board had previously ordered. This, however, did not go over well with the board.
In the final determination, the CCB first addressed the dispute over evidence. According to the CCB, the respondents failed to produce eight exhibits. The CCB said that the respondents’ arguments for not producing the evidence were “preposterous” and that “with their other meritless arguments related to the discovery dispute) be the basis of a bad-faith finding under 37 C.F.R. § 232.3.”
However, the board also said the evidence would not have impacted their decision.
That decision was to award Rooney $6,000 in statutory damages. Since he had not registered the work time (registering it after the infringement), the maximum he was eligible for was $7,500. The board came to that amount by looking at Route One’s estimated profit of $102,643.39 and Old Bay’s royalty of 10%.
Based on those numbers, the CCB estimated that Rooney’s text would be worth about 2% of the net, or $2,000. The CCB then tripled that amount, as it has done in other cases, to arrive at the final number.
Bottom Line
It’s unclear why this case was so heated. Much of the relevant information isn’t in the public record.
What is clear is that Route One aggressively defended this case. Not only did they argue a large number of defenses. In the final determination, the board said, “Given Respondents’ handling of discovery in this case, described above, it comes as no surprise that Respondents throw every possible defense at the wall in their response testimony, no matter how meritless.”
Ultimately, the board quickly dismissed all the defenses, describing them each as “obviously flawed.”
The final determination was a stiff rebuke for Route One and their representatives.
However, there was no reason for this to happen. The facts of the cast are remarkably straightforward. In an ideal world, this case would have been settled long before becoming a formal dispute.
On the other hand, if Route One were determined to defend this to the hilt, the obvious solution would have been to opt out of the CCB and force Rooney to file the case in federal court.
In the end, I can’t imagine Rooney is too unhappy with the outcome. Not only did he receive $6,000 for a paragraph of text, but the board took a strong stance against the respondents. While he did seek significantly higher damages, those were never going to be available to him under the circumstances.
Still, the case shows how a heated copyright dispute can emerge from something as simple as a tiny container meant to hold Old Bay Seasoning…
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