California chef and photographer Soichi Matsumoto accuses Maria Lugo Watson of willful copyright and trademark infringement. Matsumoto is a chef, TV host, food consultant and food photographer who runs the website www.norecipes.com. He asserts that he has used the NO RECIPE® mark since 2007, and has a federal registration for the mark. The registration is for on-line journals, namely blogs featuring (somewhat ironically) recipes, cooking and travel information. He further has copyright registrations on certain of his food photographs.
Matsumoto says that Watson is a website developer who copied his website at http://norecipies.net, using the registered trademarks and photographs, and who then reproduced and publicly displayed the counterfeit site at hundreds of different URL’s. The complaint suggests that Watson has claimed to be merely a registrar of domain names, and that it passively handles requests for website registrations but does not itself prepare such websites, but suggests that this is counter to advertising provided by defendants at its ipage.com website. In addition to trademark and copyright infringement, Matsumoto asserts claims of trademark counterfeiting and unfair competition under the Lanham Act, Massachusetts common law trademark infringement, and violation of c. 93A.
The complaint asserts that Watson is a foreign corporation based in Lutz, Florida (although elsewhere in the complaint suggests that Watson is an individual). Jurisdiction and venue are asserted based on Watson contracting with Massachusetts-based The Endurance Group to host the accused content.
Judge Stearns has been assigned to the case.
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