## Facts

- Universe Sales Co., Ltd., a Japanese clothing company, entered a licensing agreement to use certain trademarks in Japan and paid royalties to the licensor (later associated with Offshore Sportswear, Inc.).
- The licensor represented it held Japanese registrations for the marks underlying the royalty arrangement.
- Universe later concluded the Japanese trademark filings were defective and that the licensor did not hold valid Japanese trademark rights.
- Universe sued in federal court (diversity jurisdiction) seeking relief on an unjust enrichment theory, asserting it owed no further royalties because the trademark rights were invalid.
- The parties agreed Japanese law governed key aspects of entitlement to royalties but disputed whether Japanese trademark law or Japanese contract law controlled.
- The licensor submitted an expert declaration on Japanese law stating that, under Japanese contract law, the licensing contract remained enforceable and royalties remained due even if the trademark registrations were defective.
- Universe offered no competing expert testimony or other evidence on Japanese law.

## Issues

1. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 44.1, whether the district court erred by granting summary judgment based on its view of Japanese law while disregarding the only expert evidence on Japanese law and without indicating independent research into Japanese law.
2. Whether, given the undeveloped and one-sided record on Japanese law, the district court could treat invalid Japanese trademark registrations as dispositive of the contractual royalty obligation.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment for Universe and remanded.
- The court held the district court improperly disregarded the only record evidence addressing Japanese law (the licensor’s expert declaration) and provided no basis to support a contrary determination.
- The court emphasized that foreign law is determined by the judge as a question of law and the court may consult any relevant sources, but it may not ignore unrebutted foreign-law submissions without explanation or alternative analysis.

## Legal Principles

- Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 44.1, the content of foreign law is treated as a question of law for the court.
- A court may consider any relevant material on foreign law, including expert testimony, regardless of admissibility rules that govern evidence.
- A court is not required to accept a foreign-law expert’s opinion as conclusive, but if the only foreign-law evidence is unrebutted, the court must either accept it or explain its rejection based on other identified foreign-law sources or analysis.
- Summary judgment resting on an unstated or unsupported foreign-law determination is improper when the record contains unrebutted foreign-law evidence pointing the other way.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit required meaningful judicial determination of foreign law under Rule 44.1 and held that summary judgment could not stand where the district court neither addressed unrebutted expert evidence of Japanese contract law nor explained a contrary foreign-law conclusion grounded in other sources.


Universe Sales Co., Ltd. v. Silver Castle, Ltd., 182 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir. 1999)