Although the federal court stayed its action to allow a state court to determine the scope of certain licenses, the stay could not be reviewed on appeal because it did not effectively end the federal court litigation.
A federal court’s decision to temporarily stay a trademark lawsuit in order to allow a state court to decide the scope of certain licenses central to the case could not be reviewed on appeal, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has held. The court, wading into the often labyrinthine doctrine of federal court abstention and the related Colorado River “wise judicial administration doctrine,” held that the stay could not be reviewed on appeal because resolution of the earlier state court proceeding would not effectively deprive the federal court of jurisdiction to determine the trademark claims once the stay was lifted (Window World International, LLC v. O’Toole, January 7, 2022, Loken, J.).
Case date: 07 January 2022
Case number: No. 21-1108
Court: United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
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