A recent Law 360 story by Michelle Casady, “Chevron Gets $2.2M Atty Fees After Trademark Trial Win,” reports that Chevron Intellectual Property LLC has been awarded $2.2 million in attorney fees it requested after securing a $15.6 million trademark infringement judgment against a company accused of impersonating Chevron to dupe other companies into doing business with it. 

U.S. District Judge David Hittner ordered Sariel Petroleum LLC and its executives to pay Chevron $62,392.93 in costs on top of the attorney fee award.  Chevron had requested those amounts in a June 9 motion, saying that would compensate the team of 13 attorneys and one paralegal who logged a total of 3,885.9 hours working on the case.

Chevron convinced a jury that Sariel had used bogus letters, phony email addresses and what appeared to be a legitimate bank account under the name of a Chevron-affiliated company to trick companies into doing business with it.  Sariel didn't challenge the amount requested by Chevron but argued that because Chevron had redacted portions of the billing records, it couldn't properly object or challenge the hourly rates. 

Judge Hittner wrote that Chevron wasn't requesting any attorney fees "in relation to any redacted portions of the billing records."  "The court finds Chevron demonstrates the requested hourly rates are reasonable," he wrote in siding with Chevron.