## Facts

- EC Design LLC, founded by Erin Condren, sold a personal organizer called the “LifePlanner,” which included weekly and monthly calendars along with decorative and textual elements such as colorful artwork, spaces for notes, and inspirational quotations, bound in a coil format.
- Craft Smith LLC sought to enter the personal-planner market and developed a competing planner (sold through Michaels Stores, Inc.) that used a similar general planner format, while using different quotations and artwork.
- After communications between the businesses did not result in a collaboration, EC Design asserted that the Craft Smith/Michaels planner infringed EC Design’s intellectual property.
- Craft Smith filed a declaratory-judgment action in federal court seeking a determination of noninfringement.
- EC Design counterclaimed against Craft Smith (and included Michaels as a counterclaim defendant), alleging (1) infringement of EC Design’s registered copyright in the LifePlanner as a compilation and (2) infringement of the LifePlanner’s asserted product-design trade dress under the Lanham Act.
- Both sides moved for summary judgment in the United States District Court for the District of Utah.
- The district court granted summary judgment for Craft Smith and Michaels on both counterclaims, concluding (among other things) that EC Design did not have a valid compilation copyright and that EC Design failed to show the LifePlanner’s design had acquired secondary meaning for trade-dress protection.
- EC Design appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which reviewed the summary-judgment rulings de novo.

## Issues

1. Whether EC Design could defeat summary judgment on its compilation-copyright claim by showing that the allegedly copied elements were substantially similar to the protectable selection, coordination, and arrangement embodied in the LifePlanner compilation.
2. Whether EC Design produced enough evidence of secondary meaning to make the LifePlanner’s asserted product-design trade dress protectable under the Lanham Act.

## Decision

- The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment for Craft Smith and Michaels on both the copyright and trade-dress counterclaims.
- On copyright, the court disagreed with the district court’s framing that EC Design lacked a valid compilation copyright, but held that summary judgment was still proper because no reasonable jury could find substantial similarity between the accused planner and the protectable aspects of EC Design’s compilation.
- On trade dress, the court agreed that EC Design failed to raise a genuine dispute of material fact that the LifePlanner’s product design had acquired secondary meaning; without secondary meaning, the claimed trade dress was not protectable.

## Legal Principles

- A compilation copyright protects only the author’s original selection, coordination, and arrangement of elements, not the underlying unprotectable components (such as functional calendar features, standard planner conventions, or general ideas).
- In assessing substantial similarity for a compilation, the analysis filters out unprotectable material and asks whether the accused work is substantially similar to the protectable expressive choices in the compilation as a whole.
- Summary judgment is appropriate when, viewing the record in the nonmovant’s favor, no reasonable jury could find infringement of protectable expression.
- Product-design trade dress cannot be protected without proof of secondary meaning—consumer association of the design’s overall look with a single source.
- Evidence such as advertising, sales, media attention, and alleged copying must support source identification, not merely show that consumers like the design or that it is common in the marketplace.

## Conclusion

In *Craft Smith LLC v. EC Design LLC*, the Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Craft Smith and Michaels on EC Design’s claims that a competing planner infringed the LifePlanner’s compilation copyright and trade dress. Although the court did not accept the district court’s view that EC Design lacked a valid compilation copyright, it held the claim failed because the accused planner was not substantially similar to the protectable selection, coordination, and arrangement of the LifePlanner compilation. The court also held EC Design’s product-design trade dress claim failed because the evidence did not create a triable issue that the LifePlanner’s overall design had acquired secondary meaning, a required condition for trade-dress protection of product design.


Craft Smith LLC v. EC Design LLC, 969 F.3d 1092 (2020)