Court battle in New Orleans is a decade-long sno-ball fight

Allegations of trademark violations and patent infringement have been boiling up in state and federal courts since 2005 in what amounts to a decade-long sno-ball fight between SnoWizard Inc, which makes ice-shaving machines and flavorings, and rivals including Southern Snow Manufacturing and Snow Ingredients Inc. The companies have battled on a range of issues including patents on machine parts and trademarks for flavor names such as Snosweet, Mountain Maple and Orchid Cream Vanilla.

"What began as a flurry of cease-and-desist letters between the companies has turned into a blizzard of patent, trademark, and antitrust litigation," Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote for a three-judge panel.

Among them, that some of SnoWizard's litigation tactics violated racketeering law, that SnoWizard was trying to establish a sno-ball monopoly and that it fraudulently registered the White Chocolate & Chips and Cajun Red Hot trademarks.

A fluffier, finer-shaved part of the culture — as acknowledged by Elrod's ruling: "The products that are the center of this dispute are New Orleans-style sno-balls, not snow cones," she writes, adding that "a sno-ball is a dessert treat made from finely shaved ice that can be consumed with a straw or spoon while a snow cone is made using coarser crushed ice and is generally eaten directly cone to mouth."

The parties could have shaved down the overwhelming costs in time, expense, and scarce judicial resources that this litigation has consumed," Elrod wrote, "if they could have abandoned their unrelenting desire to crush the opposition.