Xcentric Ventures, LLC v. Mediolex Ltd.

MEMORANDUM

Plaintiff Xcentric Ventures, LLC (Xcen-tric) appeals from the district court’s judgment entered in favor of Defendants Me-diolex Ltd., Complaintsboard.com, and Serguei Kudriavtsev, aka Mark Schultz, in a trademark infringement case after a bench trial. As the parties are familiar with the facts, we do not recount them here. We review the district court’s conclusions of law de novo and its findings of fact for clear error. FTC v. Garvey, 383 F.3d 891 , 900 (9th Cir. 2004). We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

“To prevail on a claim of trademark infringement under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1114 , a party must prove: (1) that it has a protectible ownership interest in the mark; and (2) that the defendant’s use of the mark is likely to cause consumer confusion.” Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced Sys. Concepts, Inc., 638 F.3d 1137, 1144 (9th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We affirm the district court’s conclusion that Defendants are not directly liable for trademark infringement because they were not responsible for any use of the marks on the Complaintsboard website.

First, the district court did not clearly…