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Monster Energy Company v. Pacific Smoke International Inc.

Court
Canadian Intellectual Property Office
Jurisdiction
Canada
Decided
2024-11-20
AI tool
Unidentified
Outcome
The fabricated citation was disregarded by the court.
Monetary penalty
None reported

What was hallucinated

Fabricated: Case Law | Applicant relied on a non-existent case for the non-distinctiveness ground; the Board identified it as an AI hallucination, disregarded the submission, and warned about false citations (citing Zhang v Chen).

Details

In a trademark opposition case between Monster Energy Company and Pacific Smoke International Inc., the Applicant, Pacific Smoke, cited a non-existent case, 'Hennes & Mauritz AB v M & S Meat Shops Inc, 2012 TMOB 7', in support of its argument. This was identified as an AI hallucination by the court. The court disregarded this citation and reminded the Applicant of the seriousness of relying on false citations, whether accidental or AI-generated.

Sanction teardown · Canadian Intellectual Property Office, Canada · 2024-11-20

Monster Energy Company v. Pacific Smoke International Inc.

What happened

In Canadian Intellectual Property Office, Canada, a filing relied on an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool to help draft legal argument. The court identified the following problems with the citations in that filing:

  • Fabricated (Case Law)
    Applicant relied on a non-existent case for the non-distinctiveness ground; the Board identified it as an AI hallucination, disregarded the submission, and warned about false citations (citing Zhang v Chen).

Which AI tool

an unnamed/unconfirmed AI tool. Note: Charlotin's public database records tool attribution only where a court order, brief, or reporting on the matter states it explicitly; "unidentified" or "implied" means the record indicates AI use but does not name a specific product — we do not guess.

Outcome

The fabricated citation was disregarded by the court.

Additional detail

In a trademark opposition case between Monster Energy Company and Pacific Smoke International Inc., the Applicant, Pacific Smoke, cited a non-existent case, 'Hennes & Mauritz AB v M & S Meat Shops Inc, 2012 TMOB 7', in support of its argument. This was identified as an AI hallucination by the court. The court disregarded this citation and reminded the Applicant of the seriousness of relying on false citations, whether accidental or AI-generated.

How Citation Safe would have caught this

Citation Safe runs three deterministic layers before a brief is filed: (1) does the citation exist against CourtListener's database of published opinions, (2) if quoted, does that exact language appear in the source, (3) does the cited case actually support the proposition it is cited for. Fabricated case citations fail Layer 1. Fabricated or misattributed quotations fail Layer 2 even when the underlying case is real. Misrepresented holdings — a real case cited for a proposition it does not support — are the target of Layer 3. None of these checks involve asking another language model whether the citation looks right; they are lookups and text-matches against the actual source, which is why a hallucinated citation has to survive a direct lookup against the authoritative source — not another model's opinion — to earn a VERIFIED stamp; our measured false-verify rate is published live at /quality.

Check a brief before you file it → · See our live false-verify rate

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/568/Monster_Energy_Company_v_Pacific_Smoke_International_Inc._Canada_20_November_2024.pdf, via Damien Charlotin's public AI Hallucination Cases Database (CC0).

Source: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/documents/568/Monster_Energy_Company_v_Pacific_Smoke_International_Inc._Canada_20_November_2024.pdf

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