ORLANDO — A federal judge in Florida has granted Thor Fiber's request to exclude a report and testimony by Eli Seggev in a lawsuit filed against the company by Pro Video Instruments.
Judge Gregory Presnell entered the order in the Middle District of Florida at the end of March.
PVI and Thor Fiber are competitors that sell electronic equipment used for making signals that can be seen and heard. PVI has several federal trademarks including three trademarks the lawsuit is centered around: Minimod, Micromod, and Vecoax. Thor Fiber sells two products, the H-PCT-MOD and HDCOAX, that PVI has alleged is in direct competition with PVI's trademarked products.
In PVI's amended complaint filed in 2018, the company made three claims, one for each mark, of federal trademark unfair competition and a claim of tortious interference with an advantageous contractual relationship. To support the unfair competition claims, PVI wanted to include a report by Seggev titled "Study of Likelihood of Confusion between Pro Video Instruments, LLC and Thor Fiber Modulators, Inc." Thor Fiber instantly requested to exclude it.
Seggev was retained by PVI to figure out if there was confusion between the two companies' modulators by way of a survey. According to his findings, 35% of survey participants thought the products were made by the same company. PVI argued his testimony would be helpful for a jury to evaluate the overall impression and confusion.
The court, however, found PVI did not demonstrate such testimony would benefit a jury. Judge Presnell wrote that there wasn't a possibility for the survey "to assess the overall impression created by the parties' use of marks," or analyze confusion.