RMS Titanic, Inc. v. Kingsmen Creatives, LTD.

579 F. App'x 779
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedSeptember 2, 2014
Docket13-13711
StatusUnpublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 579 F. App'x 779 (RMS Titanic, Inc. v. Kingsmen Creatives, LTD.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
RMS Titanic, Inc. v. Kingsmen Creatives, LTD., 579 F. App'x 779 (11th Cir. 2014).

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

The plaintiffs, RMS Titanic, Inc. and Premier Exhibitions, Inc. (collectively, Premier), put on museum-quality exhibitions of artifacts recovered from the wreck site of the Titanic. Premier sued two Singapore corporations, Kingsmen Creatives and Kingsmen Exhibits (collectively, Kingsmen), alleging that they had used Premier’s confidential information or trade secrets to stage their own competing Titanic exhibition in China. The district court granted Kingsmen’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction because it found that Florida’s long arm statute did not provide it with personal jurisdiction over the Kingsmen entities. This is Premier’s appeal.

I.

Premier is made up of two entities, both of which are Florida corporations with their principal place of business in Atlanta, Georgia. As part of its business, Premier partners with venues to present exhibitions about the Titanic. On June 13, 2011, Premier entered into an agreement with a Singapore promoter (who is not a party to this lawsuit) to produce a Titanic exhibition in Singapore. Thomas Zaller, a former Premier employee who was working as a consultant to the Singapore promoter, helped the promoter negotiate the contract between it and Premier. Over the course of his involvement, Zaller repeatedly demanded and was ultimately given access to what Premier describes as “confidential and proprietary information.” Before granting access to that information, however, Premier required the Singapore promoter to agree to certain confidentiality provisions. The information that Premier gave Zaller and the promoter included “Computer-Aided Design files, graphic and text files, photographs and videos, floor plans, narratives, [and] designs for its signature works.”

Kingsmen is composed of Kingsmen Creatives (KC) and Kingsmen Exhibits (KE), both of which are Singapore corporations with their principal place of business in Singapore. The Kingsmen entities became involved in the production of the Singapore Exhibition when the promoter hired KE to build a glass floor for one of *782 the rooms in it. That was Kingsmen’s only involvement in the Singapore Exhibition. About a year later, on August 28, 2012, Zaller’s Singapore-based company, Imagine Exhibitions (Imagine), entered into a contract with Kingsmen to put on its own Titanic exhibition in Macau, China. Under the terms of the agreement between Imagine and Kingsmen, Imagine provided Kingsmen with the outline and concepts for the Macau Exhibition and Kingsmen helped to design, construct, and install it.

In preparation for the Macau Exhibition, Kingsmen contracted with a Florida company, Attractions and Entertainment Solutions (AES), to purchase a cold-to-the-touch iceberg. There is a similar iceberg in Premier’s exhibitions. Kingsmen was in Singapore when it negotiated the purchase of the iceberg from AES through email and telephone conversations. In connection with that purchase, Kingsmen emailed to AES in Florida photographs and documents that it had received from Zaller. Premier maintains that what Kingsmen sent was Premier’s “Design File” and that Kingsmen did so knowing the design file contained “proprietary and confidential intellectual property.” The iceberg was designed, processed, and manufactured by AES in Jacksonville, Florida, and sent to Kingsmen in Singapore. That is the only link between what Kingsmen did and Florida. All of the other work Kingsmen did for the Macau Exhibition took place in Asia.

Premier’s complaint alleges that the Zal-ler/Kingsmen Exhibition was a “striking copy” of Premier’s exhibition and that Zal-ler and Kingsmen used the confidential, proprietary information Premier had given them to stage the Singapore Exhibition. It also alleges that the iceberg Kingsmen purchased was an “absolute copy of the iceberg utilized by [Premier] in the [Singapore Exhibition] and numerous other Titanic exhibitions presented by [Premier] around the world.” Premier further maintains that the iceberg is “a key component of the Zaller/Kingsmen Exhibition and was able to be built only because [Kingsmen] provided AES [with Premier’s] intellectual property that had been fraudulently obtained by Zaller.” The Zaller/Kingsmen Exhibition opened in Macau, China in October 2012 and operated through March 31, 2013.

These events spawned several lawsuits. First, on February 26, 2013, Premier filed suit in the Northern District of Georgia against Zaller and his companies. On April 16, 2013, before filing a lawsuit against Kingsmen, Premier made it a settlement offer. Anthony Chong, KE’s Managing Director, contacted Samuel Weiser, the CEO of Premier, and asked for more time to consider the offer. Weiser promised that Premier would not file a lawsuit until April 23, 2013, but it was KE that struck first. On April 22, 2013, KE filed an action against Premier in Singaporean court seeking a declaration that it had not violated Premier’s intellectual property rights. Finally, on April 29, 2013, Premier filed the complaint in the lawsuit that led to this appeal, asserting claims for (1) conversion, (2) unjust enrichment, (3) trade dress infringement, (4) misappropriation of trade secrets, and (5) civil conspiracy.

Kingsmen filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, based on lack of personal jurisdiction, failure to state a claim, and forum non conveniens. In support of its motion to dismiss, Kingsmen filed Chong’s declaration as well as several other exhibits. Premier opposed the motion to dismiss and supported it with the declaration of its CFO. Premier also filed a motion for limited jurisdictional discovery and an eviden-tiary hearing. The district court granted *783 Kingsmen’s motion to dismiss on August 7, 2013, reasoning that it lacked personal jurisdiction over Kingsmen under both Florida’s long arm statute and the Due Process Clause. It also denied Premier’s requests for limited jurisdictional discovery and an evidentiary hearing.

II.

We review de novo a district court’s dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction, using a two-step inquiry. Internet Solutions Corp. v. Marshall, 557 F.3d 1293, 1295 (11th Cir.2009). We first examine whether there is jurisdiction under the state’s long arm statute and then examine whether the exercise of jurisdiction over the defendant would violate due process. Id. “A plaintiff seeking the exercise of personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant bears the initial burden of alleging in the complaint sufficient facts to make out a prima facie case of jurisdiction.” United Techs. Corp. v. Mazer, 556 F.3d 1260, 1274 (11th Cir.2009). Where the defendant submits contradictory affidavit evidence to challenge jurisdiction, the plaintiff must produce evidence supporting the existence of long arm jurisdiction. Id.

“Discovery matters are committed to the discretion of the district court,” Lee v. Etowah Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 963 F.2d 1416, 1420 (11th Cir.1992), so we review the district court’s denial of Premier’s request for jurisdictional discovery under an abuse of discretion standard, see White v. Coca-Cola Co., 542 F.3d 848, 853 (11th Cir.2008).

III.

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579 F. App'x 779, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rms-titanic-inc-v-kingsmen-creatives-ltd-ca11-2014.