Marketing Expert’s Testimony on Consumers’ Perceptions Admitted
Posted on June 26, 2025 by Expert Witness Profiler
This case centered on a trademark dispute involving the mark IDHAYAM, which means “heart” in Indian languages and was used in connection with sesame oil sales. Defendant Meenakshi Overseas LLC sold sesame oil under the IDHAYAM name and held a federal trademark registration for it. Plaintiff V.V.V. & Sons Edible Oils Limited, who also marketed sesame oil under the IDHAYAM mark, asserted that it had used the mark first and sought to cancel the Defendant’s registration along with related relief.
Plaintiff retained Thomas J. Maronick to perform a survey purporting to measure the likelihood of confusion between the Parties’ respective IDHAYAM sesame oil products.
Maronick issued an expert report describing and interpreting the results of this survey on October 30, 2024. He opined that the “level of likelihood of confusion found here, i.e., 46.7%, supports a conclusion that there is a likelihood of confusion between the two brands of sesame oil among consumers who buy Indian and Asian food.”
Plaintiff has also identified Janarthanan Rajaratnam, a director of Pankaj Exports Private Limited (“Pankaj”), as a non-retained expert who Plaintiff intends to use as a witness at trial. Pankaj is an export company located in India that has been involved in shipping IDHAYAM branded goods manufactured by Plaintiff to various parts of the world, including the United States. Plaintiff has indicated Rajaratnam will testify about various customs and practices of importers in meeting the requirements of U.S. Customs and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), as well as about the importation practices of the Parties to this action.
The Defendant filed motions to exclude the testimony of Plaintiff’s expert witness, Maronick, as well as that of non-retained expert Rajaratnam.
Marketing Expert Witness
Thomas Joseph Maronick is an Emeritus Professor of Marketing in the School of Business and Economics at Towson University in Towson, Maryland. His educational background includes a BA in Philosophy from St. Thomas Seminary, an MSBA from the University of Denver with a major in Marketing, a Doctorate in Business Administration (“DBA”) from the University of Kentucky with a major in Marketing, and a JD from the University of Baltimore, School of Law. He is an inactive member of the Maryland Bar.
At Towson University, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in strategic marketing, consumer behavior, and marketing research. He has also taught graduate and executive development courses in strategic marketing and marketing research at several universities in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas.
His professional background includes serving as the Director of Impact Evaluation in the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) from 1980 to 1997. In that capacity, he was the in-house marketing expert for all divisions of the Bureau, advising attorneys and senior management on marketing aspects of cases being considered or undertaken by Commission attorneys.
Discussion by the Court
Motion to Preclude Expert Testimony of Thomas J. Maronick
The Defendant contended that: (1) Maronick surveyed an overly broad audience, failing to limit participants to Indian consumers or to those who regularly purchased Indian food; (2) he omitted a control group; and (3) he failed to replicate real-world market conditions. According to the Defendant, the survey used low-quality photos that obscured distinguishing language on the packaging and excluded images of third-party products—factors that may have led respondents to perceive the parties’ products as more similar than they were. Due to these alleged flaws, the Defendant asserted that Maronick’s report was “completely useless” and likely to mislead the jury, and therefore should be excluded from trial.
The Court agreed with the Plaintiff’s position, as stated in their Opposition, that all survey respondents had indicated that they purchased Indian food, even if only occasionally. Therefore, the Defendant failed to demonstrate that the survey sample was clearly inappropriate. If the Defendant wished to argue that the survey group should have been more narrowly defined, the Court noted they remained free to do so at trial.
Regarding Maronick’s omission of a control group, the Parties disagreed on whether a control was necessary or useful for this type of survey. The Court concluded that this dispute pertained to the weight of Maronick’s testimony, not its admissibility.
Lastly, the Court found that the photos used in the actual survey (as opposed to the lower-quality copies submitted to the Court) were much clearer. It also held that including third-party product images could have overcomplicated the survey and reduced its effectiveness. As with the other objections, the Court ruled that these concerns affected the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility, and could be addressed during trial.
Motion to Preclude Expert Testimony of Janarthan Rajaratnam
The Defendant argued that Rajaratnam’s testimony should be excluded for three reasons: (1) he did not qualify as a proper non-retained expert, but instead acted as a retained expert because he intended to base his testimony on documents and information produced during the litigation and provided to him for review; (2) the Plaintiff had failed to fully comply with the disclosure requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 for either non-retained or retained experts; and (3) Rajaratnam lacked adequate qualifications to testify regarding U.S. Customs and FDA importation requirements and practices.
In their Opposition, the Plaintiff largely conceded that their expert disclosures were inadequate and that Rajaratnam was not a proper expert witness. Instead, the Plaintiff contended that Rajaratnam should be allowed to testify as a fact witness under Federal Rule of Evidence 701, citing his personal knowledge of U.S. Customs and FDA requirements gained through years of experience importing food products into the United States, as well as his familiarity with the importation of IDHAYAM products by both parties over several years.
The Court agreed that Rajaratnam could not testify as an expert witness due to the Plaintiff’s failure to comply with the Federal Rules’ disclosure requirements. However, the Court declined to bar him from testifying as a lay witness.
The Defendant objected, arguing that Rajaratnam had not been properly disclosed as a fact witness and should therefore be precluded from testifying in that capacity. Nonetheless, the Court noted that while Rajaratnam was originally identified as a non-retained expert, he had been timely disclosed as a witness nearly eight months earlier. Moreover, the Defendant had the opportunity to depose him on January 22 and 24, 2025. Given this, the Court found that any potential prejudice to the Defendant was not significant enough to justify excluding Rajaratnam’s testimony entirely.
Held
- The Court denied the Defendant’s motion to preclude the testimony of expert witness Thomas J. Maronick.
- The Court denied the Defendant’s motion to preclude the testimony of non-retained expert witness Janarathanan Rajaratnam.
Key Takeaway:
Technical flaws in a survey—such as the format of the questions or how the survey is conducted—affect the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. In essence, concerns about methodology, survey design, reliability, the expert’s experience and reputation, or critiques of the conclusions go to the weight of the survey, not whether it can be admitted.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | V.V.V. & Sons Edible Oils Limited V. Meenakshi Overseas LLC |
| Docket Number: | 2:14cv2961 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, California Eastern |
| Order Date: | June 18, 2025 |
