If you scan the Northern District of Indiana copyright and trademark indexes, you will keep seeing captions like Plaintiff v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A. That is not a missing name. That is the case. The real defendants – often dozens or hundreds of Amazon, eBay, Temu, or Shopify storefronts – are listed on a sealed exhibit filed with the complaint. Counsel asks for a temporary restraining order, an asset freeze, and leave to serve by email. Many of those defendants never appear. Defaults follow. The docket looks busy but the local story is thin.
These filings started as a Northern District of Illinois habit and migrated. Hammond now sees a regular diet of them. Some are trademark counterfeiting. Some are copyright. The plaintiff is often a brand or a designer with no Indiana office. The “Indiana” connection is venue and a magistrate who will sign a TRO. That is enough for the statute. It is not enough for the kind of post this blog is for.
This site follows named parties, local businesses, university marks, and the occasional food truck that could not sort out a cease-and-desist. A sealed schedule of overseas sellers does not give you that. There is usually no public complaint worth quoting, no Indiana hook beyond the case number, and no answer coming. When a Schedule A filing names a real local defendant or turns into something other than a default mill, it will earn a post. Until then, you will see those captions in the monthly wrap, if at all, and not as a standalone post.
Stay tuned for the cases with names on both sides of the “v.”
Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis
