Jill M. Pietrini

Pietrini knows a few “Bad Moms,” since there’s two installments in the franchise. She represents STX Entertainment, the studio that produced the films in a copyright case.

A lawyer in Florida started her own business called Bad Moms, which had an emphasis on organizing social events and its own branded line of spirits. The woman tried to trademark the name, but was fended off by Pietrini at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

“We established we had prior trademark rights,” she said. On top of that, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to confuse the separate products, since the film features Mila Kunis and other actresses playing mothers who break the shackles of parenting in lieu of partying.

“What she was doing was not far afield from the subject matter of the movie or the licensing the company had done,” Pietrini said.

Bad Moms LLC filed a declaratory judgment action in the Southern District of Florida. The case was resolved in December with a stipulated judgment for Pietrini’s client. Bad Moms LLC v. STX Financing LLC, 17-62510 (S.D. Florida, filed Dec. 19, 2017).

When talking about the “Bad Moms” case and other victories, Pietrini prefaces her comments by labeling such matters as fun.

“The thing about being an IP lawyer, a trademark lawyer, is you have to not only know the law, but you have to know the businesses that people are in, how things are done in those businesses,” she said. “Then you have these interesting issues arise.”

One such example was when she learned about the functions of British Royal Family members.

In 2018, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office permitted Pietrini’s client, designer Rachel Ashwell, owner of SC Licensing, to register a crown and feather design after an eight-year petition.

The point of contention: the design included the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales, so the patent office denied the petition for the time being.

The matter escalated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, but was ultimately remanded back to the patent office, which eventually sided with Pietrini’s claims and evidence.

“The Prince of Wales doesn’t have a governmental function and if they don’t have a governmental function, that flag or whatever the symbol they use is not something that’s protectable,” Pietrini said.

— Arin Mikailian