On June 14, 2016, two lawyers in Hunton’s Insurance Coverage Counseling and Litigation practice, Syed Ahmad and Jennifer White, published an article in Risk Management Magazine about how commercial general liability (“CGL”) policies may help policyholders looking to recover attorney’s fees or fund settlements in trademark infringement litigation. Historically, CGL policies were the wrong place to look for coverage, and insurers raised often successful defenses to covering such trademark infringement cases under CGL policies. Or, policyholders would avoid CGL insurance altogether in favor of intellectual property (“IP”) insurance, which usually covers the cost of sitting on either side of the “v.” when enforcing or defending IP rights. But recent case law signals that businesses may want to take another look at the CGL policies that once spurned their IP advances.
