Schedule A false advertising TRO dissolved for the defendants who showed up

Kiel James Patrick, LLC v. Partnerships & Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A, 2026 WL 3015613, C.A. No. 25-cv-633-MRD-AEM (D.R.I. Oct. 7, 2026)

KJP filed a Schedule A claim against a bunch of defendants for false designation of origin/false advertising; many defaulted, while two answered and got the TRO against them dissolved.  

KJP sells seasonal and festive sweaters; defendants sell competing sweaters. The defendants argued that particularized review of the claims against them was appropriate; KJP disagreed, arguing that the defendants delayed unduly and pointing to the allegations the court had previously accepted in granting and extending the TRO, which thereby became a preliminary injunction. The court was not impressed by KJP’s argument.

False designation of origin: KJP failed to show that the answering defendants used its photos. KJP alleged that, even if they didn’t copy the photos exactly, they re-generated them using AI. (Why this would violate the Lanham Act, especially given Dastar, is left as an exercise for the reader.) The basic problem was that there was no evidence “that the challenged images were copied from [KJP’s] website, altered from [its] photographs, or generated by AI to impersonate [it].” Instead, the answering defendants offered product-image evidence from an “independent sourcing agent, 1688.com,” as their source. “A review of Plaintiff’s website further reveals that the images submitted by the Answering Defendants look dissimilar to Plaintiff’s advertising materials, even if there is some similarity between the sweaters.” That similarity wasn’t confusion about origin.

False advertising: This was the same theory that defendants used KJP’s advertising materials, particularly its website images, without permission. KJP argued that defendants sold “imitation” products. But that’s not a false representation, nor does it show consumer deception. “Furthermore, there is no evidence on the current record that the Answering Defendants copied Plaintiff’s trademarks or made a particular claim about their products that is verifiably false or misleading.”

As Eric Goldman has often noted about Schedule A cases, these allegations, at least as to these defendants, should have been thin enough to deny the TRO; the plaintiff apparently didn’t supply convincing pictures even when challenged to do so.