In this article from Law360, Finnegan attorney Naresh Kilaru provided commentary on the rise of counterfeiters in the mobile app industry. As the market for apps continues to grow, “The big question is who has the burden to police this stuff,” he said. “That’s really the million-dollar question.” Kilaru observed that the “closest analogous piece of Lanham Act case law is the 2010 Second Circuit ruling in Tiffany v. eBay Inc., which found that the burden is on rights holders, but that an online vendor like eBay must deal with counterfeit goods if given sufficient, specific notice.” Kilaru also pointed out that “sometimes it’s just easier to rely on the terms and conditions, or the user policy, of the particular site,” when rights holders seek assistance from app marketplaces to remove knockoffs.
