In
SDNY Vermont Potters
Complain of Pirated Coffee Mugs
As Cup of Joy Turns Cup of
Litigation
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
February 11 –
A dispute about coffee mugs
erupted in the U.S. District
Court for the Southern
District of New York on
February 11 before Judge
Gregory Woods who is also
handling the criminal leaking
of Treasury Department
reports, see below. Vermont
potters Zcups LLC, represented
in Judge Woods' courtroom by a
young couple and their two
sons, accuse Home Essentials
and Beyond of selling knock
off coffee cups with teh same
slogans on this, "A Cup of
Hope," in violation of
trademark and trade dress. But
Home Essential's lawyer
questioned why their cups
didn't have the "TM" or "R"
symbol on them, and said that
in any event Home Essential
was no longer selling these
mugs. Judge Woods encouraged
settlement, saying that
litigation is expensive in
light of the total volume of
6000 mugs mis-sold, allegedly.
It was agreed the parties
would exchange sales
information under a
confidentiality order, and try
to dispense with this cup of
bitterness. The case is
1:18-cv-09196-GHW Zpots LLC v.
Home Essentials & Beyond,
Inc. and, yes, there were not
other journalists there but
for Inner City Press. A Cup of
Exclusives. Also before Judge
Woods on January 30 the U.S.
Treasury employee accused in
October of leaking Suspicious
Activity Reports about Paul
Manafort and others, Natalie
Edwards, pleaded not guilty.
Afterward on
Worth Street, Inner City Press
asked her lawer Jacob Kaplan
of Brafman & Associates
about a statement made during
the proceeding, that another
person's device was also
search. Kaplan acknowledged
that had been said, adding
that he didn't know who it
was. Video here,
Vine here.
Discovery will begin once a
protective order has been
negotiated. The next court
date is April 2 at 4 pm. The
prosecutor, Daniel Richenthal,
gave a copy of the Information
to some in attendance.
Here's from what
was announced in the Complaint
in October: "Beginning in
approximately October 2017,
and lasting until the present,
EDWARDS unlawfully disclosed
numerous SARs to a reporter
(“Reporter-1”), the substance
of which were published over
the course of approximately 12
articles by a news
organization for which
Reporter-1 wrote (“News
Organization-1”). The
illegally disclosed SARs
pertained to, among other
things, Paul Manafort, Richard
Gates, the Russian Embassy,
Mariia Butina, and Prevezon
Alexander. EDWARDS had access
to each of the pertinent SARs
and saved them – along with
thousands of other files
containing sensitive
government information – to a
flash drive provided to her by
FinCEN. She transmitted the
SARs to Reporter-1 by means
that included taking
photographs of them and
texting the photographs to
Reporter-1 over an encrypted
application. In addition to
disseminating SARs to
Reporter-1, EDWARDS sent
Reporter-1 internal FinCEN
emails appearing to relate to
SARs or other information
protected by the BSA, and
FinCEN nonpublic memoranda,
including Investigative Memos
and Intelligence Assessments
published by the FinCEN
Intelligence Division, which
contained confidential
personal, business, and/or
security threat assessments.
At the time of EDWARDS’s
arrest, she was in possession
of a flash drive appearing to
be the flash drive on which
she saved the unlawfully
disclosed SARs, and a
cellphone containing numerous
communications over an
encrypted application in which
she transmitted SARs and other
sensitive government
information to Reporter-1."
We'll have more on this.
***
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