Fiskars can't cut down $1.4 million disgorgement award

Fiskars Finland OY AB v. Woodland Tools Inc., 2025 WL 3124111, No. 22-cv-540-jdp (W.D. Wisc. Nov. 7, 2025)

Previously in this false advertising case the court sent to a jury part of Woodland’s claim against Fiskars for false advertising, based on Fiskars’s statements about the cutting power of its tools, and some of its statements that certain products were designed in the United States. The jury sided with Woodland and the court ordered disgorgement of about $1.4 million of Fiskars’s profits. Here, the court denies JMOL to Fiskars as well as Woodland’s requests for attorneys’ fees and prejudgment interest.

Fiskars argued that Woodland showed no evidence of harm, such as diverted sales. There was no evidence of any specific lost sale, but Woodland wasn’t required to present such evidence to get the equitable remedies of injunction and disgorgement, only a likelihood of future injury. “The likelihood of future injury is readily shown when the parties are direct competitors and the false statement implicates the plaintiff’s product.” Here, the evidence showed that the parties’ tools appearing side-by-side on the shelves of some retailers. And 14.5% of Woodland’s survey respondents construed Fiskars’s “3X More Power” claim to be a comparison to competitive products, while Fiskar’s own expert testified that 43.9% of survey respondents considered Fiskars’ cutting power claims in making their purchases. A reasonable jury could find likely future harm.

As for the design origin claims, they were unambiguously false. One of Fiskars’s witnesses testified that the design origin claims didn’t resonate with consumers. But they were at least implicitly comparative, and Fiskar’s survey found that 37.1% of survey respondents considered the design origin claim in making their purchase of Fiskars tools. A reasonable jury could also find likely future harm here.

Fiskars argued that the quantified cutting power claims weren’t actionable statements of fact because they had no ascertainable meaning. Even if this argument weren’t waived, the verdict was supported by substantial evidence. A claim that Fiskars’s cutting tools were “powerful” might be unquantifiable puffery, but “more power” implies a comparison with something else. “That comparison could be tested and confirmed or disproven, even if the claim is ambiguous because the object of the comparison isn’t stated.” “More power” wasn’t “a completely vacuous or inherently subjective claim like ‘better,’ or even the resolutely ambiguous ‘local.’” And adding the quantifier “3X more power” “suggests an even more specific comparison that has somehow been measured or calculated.” People didn’t have to know exactly how to believe it.

The survey evidence “showed that a substantial number of respondents took the cutting power claims to mean three times more power in comparison to competitive products.” But this wasn’t true. Fiskars’ evidence showed that the original comparison was between Fiskars’s mechanically advantaged tools and single-pivot tools. Although the claim was ambiguous, a significant number of prospective purchases interpreted the cutting power claims to be a reference to competitive products, and that interpretation was false.

 

Fiskars argued that Woodlands didn’t test enough different products to show that the claims were false as to all. But given the origin of the claim in a comparison with single-pivot tools, there was no reason to think that Fiskars could support the claim that its tools were better than mechanically advantaged tools. (This is perhaps an understandable instance of burden-shifting, at least with respect to the burden of production, or an adoption of the Third Circuit rule that making a claim that you have literally no reason to think is true constitutes falsity.)

Materiality: Although one Fiskars witness testified that neither the cutting power claims nor the design origin claims resonated with consumers, there was “ample testimony” that Fiskars invested a lot in touting its cutting power claims. A retailer requested “aisle violators” promoting the 3X claims, suggesting that it regarded the cutting power claims as important. Woodland employees, who used to be Fiskars employees, testified about the importance of the claims; the jury could have found them to be biased, but it didn’t have to. And Fiskar’s survey could also be used to show materiality: 43.9% and 37.1% were “alone” enough to suggest materiality.

Fiskars’ survey also asked respondents what factors were important to the purchasing decision, asking them to allocate 100 points among them. Cutting power scored an average of 7.7 points; design origin scored an average of 5.5 points. Fiskars argued that these scores were too low to find materiality, but “manufacturer or brand name” was the factor ranked third highest among the nine options, and it only scored an average of only 10.1. Although other factors accounted for an average of 86.8 points, the expert didn’t testify that cutting power or design origin were irrelevant, and the jury could weigh the survey in Woodland’s favor.

Still, this wasn’t an exceptional case, just a thoroughly litigated one; no fees (or prejudgment interest). On the patent claims, Woodland argued that Fiskars made little effort to investigate its claims and brought this case as an illegitimate effort to quash legitimate competition, promising to go after Woodland Tools with “scorched earth” tactics using the world’s largest law firm. “The case had a David and Goliath feel to it, due mainly to the relative size of the parties. And there’s no doubt that Fiskars pursued the case aggressively.”

Still, the court found Fiskars’s outrage “understandable” because Woodland Tools was founded by former Fiskars employees, and there was some evidence that “some of those employees were laying the groundwork for the new competitor while they were still working for Fiskars. Some of the employees left with Fiskars work product and software code.” Although Woodland prevailed on these claims at summary judgment, “that doesn’t mean that the actions of Woodland Tools employees were unimpeachable, or that Fiskars pursued legal action out of pure spite. Part of Fiskars’s goal was to impede competition from Woodland Tools, but that’s an ordinary and lawful purpose of litigation over trade secrets and intellectual property.”

The court didn’t award Lanham Act fees because it assessed reasonableness in the overall context of this case, which featured multiple claims.  Woodland’s “success in showing willful false advertising based on the 12 cutting power claims and one of the design origin claims [was] a small part of a much larger case.” And, though Fiskar’s false advertising was willful, it wasn’t particularly egregious. The cutting power claims weren’t literally false, and only a minority of survey respondents interpreted them as a comparison to competing products or found them material. Nor was Fiskars’s litigation conduct exceptional.

Prejudgment interest: Under the Lanham Act, there is a presumption that “victims of violations of federal law” are awarded prejudgment interest, but the decision is ultimately committed to the discretion of the court. The court would have awarded prejudgment interest for damages reflecting the time value of the money, but not for disgorgement in the absence of actual damages. Prejudgment interest would be a penalty, not compensation.