ONY, Inc. v. Cornerstone Therapeutics, Inc.

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Plaintiff filed a complaint seeking damages and injunctive relief, alleging that defendants violated, inter alia, the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1125(a)(1), and New York General Business Law 349 when defendants published a scientific article reporting research results related to plaintiff's production of surfactants. The court concluded that, as a matter of law, statements of scientific conclusions about unsettled matters of scientific debate could not give rise to liability for damages sounding in defamation. The court also concluded that the secondary distribution of excerpts of such an article could not give rise to liability, so long as the excerpts did not mislead a reader about the conclusions of the article. Therefore, the district court correctly concluded that plaintiff failed to state a claim based on publication of the article itself because the challenged statements were protected scientific opinion and plaintiff failed to adequately allege that defendants Chiesi and Cornerstone distributed misleading excerpts of the article. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "ONY, Inc. v. Cornerstone Therapeutics, Inc." on Justia Law