They Canceled My Ticket I Canceled Them Chapter 20
The first move after the acquisition came faster than they expected.
Two weeks later, LN North America announced the completed acquisition of Northstar Studio.
Representing Northstar, I filed for an emergency injunction in federal court, suing Winslow Design for copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of confidentiality.
The judge quickly granted a temporary restraining order. Marcus’s company was barred from using the disputed designs and from destroying any emails or server data.
The lawsuit dragged on for months.
Nine months later, the case went to trial.
Original design files, version histories, email timestamps, server logs—all of it was entered into evidence. Every record pointed to one conclusion: Madison had obtained an unpublished, discarded proposal from Northstar, and Winslow Design had then passed it off as their own to a client.
Marcus’s lawyers couldn’t explain the origin of the files.
As the project lead, Madison took the witness stand. Through tears, she tried to shift the blame to an intern.
“I didn’t know those were Northstar’s files. Someone put them in the shared folder, and I just assumed they were okay to use.”
I sat in the front row of the gallery, watching her performance.
In the end, the court found Winslow Design liable for damages, permanently enjoined the company from using the designs, and cited the intentional infringement as an aggravating factor in calculating the penalties.