On Thursday, I flew out to San Jose for the umpteenth time for the Impossible Lawsuit.
For the last 4.5 years, Impossible Foods has been suing our company IMPOSSIBLE (and recently me) trying to cancel our trademarks – including ones related to our non-profit work at Impossible.org. After years of them using all sorts of delay tactics, we are finally getting heard out in court.
Thursday was the summary judgment hearing.
This was my first time at one of these types of hearings.
From what I had heard, summary judgment can take 20 or 40 minutes or could go longer. We had a two hour block on the judge’s schedule and I didn’t know how much of that we would use.
As it went – we ended up going almost a full 3 hours with one small break.
While it was an open court – so anyone could really attend – I don’t know what I can and can’t say about the proceedings so far.
As for logistics, it was me and my legal team and the opposing counsel (2 from Impossible Foods & 1 of their in-house counsel). One lady sat in the audience – which I think was an Impossible Foods representative.
Everyone is asking – “What happened at the hearing?”
Well the hearing is just a hearing. The judge hears the arguments and then gives feedback based on what they think so far.
However, the judge didn’t rule on anything at our hearing. When they do that – it’s called a bench ruling and is usually pretty rare (from what I’ve read).
We still have 4.5 months left until trial (March) – so I would assume the judge decides before our pre-trial hearing (in February), but there’s really no time table for them to decide. They have a lot of freedom to run their courts the way they like – so we are just waiting and will respond as we need to.
All of this is relatively new to me. While we went to the same court house for a court-ordered mediation last July (where they sued my personally the night before), this was my first time there during an actual court session.
All of it was pretty interesting to watch and it was a good preview of what the trial might look like when it comes in March.
The trial date is set for March 9th.
We’re going to keep going. I’ll be sharing more along the way.
Thank you for the support.
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