## Facts

- Hard Rock Cafe Licensing Corporation owned registered “Hard Rock” trademarks used on apparel.
- Concession Services, Inc. (CSI) owned and operated two flea markets where it rented booth space to independent vendors, advertised the markets, charged admission, and provided limited security.
- Private investigators hired by Hard Rock found a vendor, Iqbal Parvez, openly selling counterfeit “Hard Rock” T-shirts at CSI’s flea markets.
- CSI posted at least one general warning sign against illegal sales and asserted it would cooperate with trademark owners, but it lacked meaningful, systematic efforts to detect or deter counterfeiting.
- Hard Rock sued under the Lanham Act for trademark infringement and related claims against Parvez, CSI, and others; Parvez settled before trial.
- After a bench trial, the district court found CSI violated the Lanham Act and entered a permanent injunction restricting sales of merchandise bearing Hard Rock marks at CSI’s flea markets; it denied attorney’s fees.

## Issues

1. Whether a flea-market operator that does not directly sell goods can be liable for contributory trademark infringement for vendors’ counterfeit sales under the Lanham Act.
2. Whether “willful blindness” can satisfy the knowledge element of contributory trademark infringement.
3. Whether the district court applied the proper standards in determining CSI’s liability and in fashioning injunctive and related relief.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit held contributory trademark liability can extend to a flea-market operator under the standard articulated in *Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc.*.
- The court held willful blindness is treated as the equivalent of actual knowledge for contributory infringement.
- The court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings, including additional fact-finding and application of the correct contributory-liability analysis to CSI and reconsideration of aspects of relief.

## Legal Principles

- Contributory trademark infringement may be imposed on an intermediary who intentionally induces infringement or who continues to provide a service or facility to a party it knows or has reason to know is infringing.
- The *Inwood* contributory-infringement framework is not limited to manufacturers and distributors; it may apply to landlord-like operators (including flea-market operators) when they have the ability to control the venue and respond to infringement.
- Willful blindness—deliberately avoiding confirmation of likely infringement—can satisfy the “knows or has reason to know” requirement.
- A venue operator with notice or reason to know of counterfeiting must take reasonable steps to prevent further infringing sales; passive, general prohibitions may be insufficient when infringement is apparent.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit recognized that flea-market operators may be contributorily liable for vendors’ counterfeit sales when the operator knows or is willfully blind to the infringement and fails to take reasonable preventive measures, and it remanded for refinement of the liability and remedy determinations under that standard.


Hard Rock Cafe Licensing Corp. v. Concession Servs., Inc., 955 F.2d 1143 (7th Cir. 1992)