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Update June 1, 2018: Thanks to Euna Park for the updates she was able to post on the court hearing this morning in NYC. The judge denied FH the temporary restraining order she requested for the publishing of books with the word “cocky” in the title and removed Kevin Kneupper from the lawsuit. Kevin being removed from the lawsuit has no bearing on his trademark case. That is separate.
Much of the hearing discussed what cocky represented: contents of the book or an adjective for the title. But even if used for the title, the word wasn't strong enough to indicate a specific series. Plaintiff argued that "cocky" in romance genre was synonymous to Hopkins' books.
— Euna Park (@eunapark) June 1, 2018
FH’s lawyer is really claiming that the word “cocky” is synonomous with FH in the romance genre. Wow. Considering nobody knew who she was before all of this came to light, that’s overstating the shit out of things. I mean, sure, NOW that might be true but not in the way I think her lawyer meant.
Author Liv Morris also attended the hearing and had this to say about the Cocktales: The Cocky Collective:
I attended the hearing for #cockygate today. As an author in #Cocktales our book is free to continue. On the way home and will tweet specifics and observations. Many that will NOT make official record.
— Liv It Up! (@LivMorrisAuthor) June 1, 2018
This is more great news for Team Romance. I’m super glad to see that Cocktales will be able to continue to sell books. I really love how supportive our community has been over this whole thing. It makes me so glad to be apart of such an awesome community.
Here is a list of links that Courtney Milan provided that includes all, or well, most documents pertaining to the lawsuit:
Defendants Joint Memo in Opposition to Preliminary Injunction & TRO
Tara Crescent Affidavit
Crescent Exhibit D
Crescent Exhibit G
Declaration for Jennifer Watson
Declaration for Penny Reid
Plaintiff (FH) Reply to Memorandum of Law in further support of Plainitffs Motion
Full Transcript of Preliminary Hearing on June 1, 2018
Here are some other posts that went up in the last couple of days:
Authors Guild and RWA Prevail in Court Defending Authors in “Cocky” Trademark Dispute
Judge Denies Injunction Request in Cocky Trademark Dispute
RWA’s Update on Recent Trademark Proceedings
The Cocky Trademark Author Writes an Open Letter to Herself in Response to Cockygate
How an Author Trademarking the word “cocky” turned the romance novel industry inside out
Marc Whipple has a great running commentary on the entire #cockygate on his blog so be sure to check that out too.
Posted on May 30, 2018: Rowena and I have been on vacation so while we’ve been keeping up with the latest nonsense with #cockygate, we haven’t had a chance to update until now.