Shenzhen Langmi Technology Co., Ltd. v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A, No. 25 C 1966, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Feb. 26, 2026) (Ellis, J.).
Judge Ellis granted in part and denied in part Defendants’ motion to recover damages on a $10,000 TRO bond in this copyright infringement case involving cosmetic product packaging images. The Court found Defendants were entitled to recover the full $10,000 bond amount but refused to allow recovery in excess of the bond or award attorney’s fees.
Plaintiff Langmi, a Chinese cosmetics company, sued thirty-six Amazon sellers for copyright infringement as Doe defendants, later narrowing the case to eight defendants. After obtaining a TRO requiring a $10,000 bond, Langmi pursued a preliminary injunction but ultimately voluntarily dismissed the case. Defendants then moved to recover damages on the bond.
Applying Coyne-Delany Co., Inc. v. Capital Dev. Bd. of Ill., 717 F.2d 385 (7th Cir. 1983), the Court held that a prevailing defendant is entitled to damages on the injunction bond unless there is good reason not to require payment. Langmi’s voluntary dismissal established that Defendants were wrongfully enjoined, and Langmi offered no reason to deny recovery.
The dispute was over whether Defendants could recover damages exceeding the bond. Defendants argued Langmi acted in bad faith in obtaining the TRO, pointing to (1) allegedly false statements in Langmi’s owner’s declaration about when he licensed certain pre-existing images from a Chinese website, and (2) authorization letters Langmi later obtained during the litigation. The Court rejected both arguments.
Defendants’ alleged false statements were premised on metadata. The Court held that Defendants’ counsel’s own interpretation of website metadata was too speculative to support a bad faith finding, citing cases rejecting attorney analysis of metadata as “misplaced and unsupported speculation.” Defendants also submitted an expert declaration from a graphic designer only in their reply brief, which the Court declined to consider it as procedurally improper. The Court also found the graphic designer’s qualifications insufficient, and so it would not have been substantively considered regardless. The expert claimed “considerable experience” reading webpage metadata but provided no details about the nature of that experience or how it informed his conclusions.
Notably, the Court admonished Defendants’ counsel for misrepresenting the record, finding that Defendants repeatedly claimed a website representative said Langmi’s owner visited “recently” to obtain authorization letters, when in fact the representative made no such temporal statement.
Finally, the Court denied Defendants’ request for attorneys’ fees as procedurally improper because it was raised for the first time in reply.