UCP International Company Limited v. Balsam Brands Inc.
Opinion
Trial Court Opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 UCP INTERNATIONAL COMPANY Case No. 3:18-cv-07579-WHO LIMITED, et al., 8 Plaintiffs, ORDER ON MOTION TO STRIKE AND DISMISS v. Re: Dkt. Nos. 36, 41, 42, 47, 50, 53, 60, 61 BALSAM BRANDS INC., et al., 11 Defendants.
The parties before me—competitors in the world of high-end artificial Christmas trees— have brought their dispute into federal court for a third time. Plaintiffs UCP International Company Limited and Global United Enterprises Limited (collectively, “UCP”) allege that defendants Balsam Brands Inc. and its founder and CEO Thomas Harman (collectively, “Balsam”) engaged in wrongful conduct in 2015 and 2016 when pursuing and settling patent infringement claims against UCP’s only U.S. supplier. According to UCP, Balsam brought that case knowing it was objectively baseless and induced the supplier to settle on abusive terms, squeezing UCP’s trees out of the market in the process. A second lawsuit in 2016 found UCP…