11th Circ. Revives Edible Arrangements TM Suit

 Law360 (October 24, 2025, 8:11 PM EDT) — The Eleventh Circuit reinstated a trademark infringement case brought by Edible Arrangements against 1-800-Flowers on Friday, saying a lower court had improperly granted the latter company a win by finding that its competing conduct was a continuation of practices it had begun before a 2016 settlement agreement between the two parties.

A three-judge panel said in an order that U.S. District Judge Victoria Calvert’s decision that Edible Arrangements’ claims were barred by res judicata — a principle that says legal claims that had already been decided by a court cannot be asserted again — was incorrect. The panel reversed Judge Calvert’s opinion and remanded the case to Georgia federal court.

The case stems from a more than decade-old dispute between the two businesses, which compete by selling gift products. Edible Arrangements previously sued in 2014 in Connecticut, alleging trademark infringement related to fruit bouquets, and the parties settled in 2016.

Edible Arrangements launched the current case in 2020, accusing 1-800-Flowers of buying keywords related to Edible’s products for search engine advertisements. In granting summary judgment to 1-800-Flowers, Judge Calvert ruled that the 2016 settlement released the company from those allegations.

The panel on Friday focused on a few paragraphs in the settlement agreement related to keyword bidding, one of which held that 1-800-Flowers would seek approval from the Federal Trade Commission to stop specified keyword bidding. It was undisputed, however, that the FTC never weighed in on specific keyword bidding, the order said.

The settlement released 1-800-Flowers from liability for keyword bidding claims through the date of the agreement, but didn’t prevent Edible Arrangements from bringing future claims afterward, the order said.

But, Judge Calvert ruled that the keyword bidding in the present case was a continuation of the same conduct in the Connecticut suit and was therefore covered by the settlement agreement. Judge Calvert said Edible Arrangements’ claims were comparable to those in the 2014 Eleventh Circuit case In Re Managed Care. In that case, certain members of a class sued several years after a settlement agreement between them and another party, and some of those claims were dismissed since they were found to be based on a continuation of the same conduct, according to the Friday order.

The panel disagreed that Edible Arrangements’ case was similar to In Re Managed Care, saying the two are “quite different.”

“But to the extent we can apply the teaching of In Re Managed Care here, it favors Edible’s position,” the panel said. “The post-settlement keyword bidding activities are more like the [Employee Retirement Income Security Act] claims from In Re Managed Care (which were not barred) because each alleged keyword bidding infringement post-settlement represents a new claim. Thus, under the plain terms of the settlement agreement, Edible’s claims based on keyword bidding which postdated the settlement agreement are not released by the settlement agreement.”

The panel found that, since Judge Calvert had also tossed Edible Arrangements’ breach of contract claim without addressing it “either by name or with reasoning,” that claim, too, must be revived.

“We’re pleased with this decisive win. The court’s ruling makes clear that 1-800-Flowers cannot avoid scrutiny for its post-settlement conduct involving Edible’s protected marks,” Edward A. Bedard, an attorney for Edible Arrangements, told Law360 in a statement Friday. “We appreciate the court’s careful analysis and application of the settlement agreement’s plain language, and we are eager to move forward and vindicate our clients’ trademark rights.”