Callie A. Bjurstrom

When Bjurstrom started taking on intellectual property cases, many of the attorneys in the field had technical backgrounds.

“I don’t have a technical background,” she said. “[But] I used to do a lot of product liability work, so I was used to working with engineers and figuring out how things work.”

Bjurstrom tried and won two jury trials last year. “What I’ve found is that, in the IP area, you have to take difficult technology and you have to boil it down to something people understand,” she said.

Since the jury is not filled with engineers, IP litigators must be able to communicate at a level where people can understand the concepts in each case, she said.

“I found that I was a good bridge between the highly technical and being able to speak with your neighbors,” Bjurstrom said. “And that’s what the jury is.”

In December, Bjurstrom won a jury verdict for client San Diego Comic-Con in a case against Dan Farr Productions. While she did not get the damages she was seeking, the outcome could have a larger impact on similar events.

“The folks there are just wonderful people with a real passion for promoting and celebrating” comic arts, Bjurstrom said of her client, “a nonprofit educational corporation ... out of San Diego.”

San Diego Comic-Con alleged that in 2013, Dan Farr Productions began promoting a Salt Lake Comic Con in Utah. Bjurstrom’s client, San Diego Comic-Con, has held an annual San Diego Comic-Con event since 1970 and holds trademarks for its logo and several permutations of the term “Comic-Con.” According to her client, the event capitalized on decades of its brand equity.

The nine-day trial in San Diego “was about protecting the Comic Con brand from opportunists, which these guys were,” Bjurstrom said. “The jury found in our favor on all three counts of trademark infringement.” San Diego Comic Convention v. Dan Farr Productions, 14-CV01865 (S.D. Cal., filed Aug. 7, 2014).

In another case, Bjurstrom represented HM Electronics Inc., a company that makes drive-through headsets, in a trademark infringement and unfair competition dispute. Competitor R.F. Technologies had been selling and re-branding HM Electronics’ headsets to pass them off as its own original product.

Although R.F. Technologies was “absolutely unauthorized” to fix HM Electronics’ headsets, “people were confused to believe that they were authorized to work on these products and then they blew the warranty,” Bjurstrom said.

She obtained a preliminary injunction prohibiting R.F. Technologies’ unlawful and unfair practices. However, the company failed to comply with numerous provisions of the injunction, leading the court to hold R.F. Technologies in contempt and awarding HM Electronics compensatory sanctions in attorney fees and costs, as well as disgorgement of its profits. HM Electronics v. RF Technologies, 12-CV0884 (S.D. Cal., filed Dec. 4, 2012).

— Skylar Dubelko