Dewberry Group, Inc. v. Dewberry Engineers Inc.

Summary

In awarding the “defendant’s profits” to the prevailing plaintiff in a trademark infringement suit under the Lanham Act, 15 U. S. C. §1117(a), a court can award only profits ascribable to the “defendant” itself.

Text

PRELIMINARY PRINT 
Volume 604 U. S. Part 1 
Pages 321–333 
OFFICIAL REPORTS 
OF 
THE SUPREME COURT 
February 26, 2025 
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF 
reporter of decisions 
Page Proof Pending Publication
NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before 
the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter 
of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, 
[email protected], of any typographical or other formal errors.

Page Proof Pending Publication
OCTOBER TERM, 2024 321 
Syllabus 
DEWBERRY GROUP, INC., fka DEWBERRY CAPITAL 
CORP. v. DEWBERRY ENGINEERS INC. 
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for 
the fourth circuit 
No. 23–900. Argued December 11, 2024—Decided February 26, 2025 
The federal Lanham Act provides for a prevailing plaintiff to recover the 
“defendant's profts” deriving from improper use of a mark. 15 U. S. C. 
§ 1117(a). Dewberry Engineers successfully sued Dewberry Group—a 
competitor real-estate development company—for trademark infringe-
ment under the Lanham Act. Dewberry Group provides services 
needed to generate rental income from properties owned by separately 
incorporated affliates. That income goes on the affliates' books; Dew-
berry Group receives only agreed-upon fees. And those fees are appar-
ently set at less than market rates—the Group has operated at a loss 
for decades, surviving only through cash infusions by John Dewberry, 
who owns both the Group and the affliates. To refect that “economic 
reality,” the District Court treated Dewberry Group and its affliates 
“as a single corporate entity” for purposes of calculating a profts award. 
The District Court thus totaled the affliates' real-estate profts from 
the years Dewberry Group infringed, producing an award of nearly $43 
million. A divided Court of Appeals panel affrmed that award. 
Held: In awarding the “defendant's profts” to the prevailing plaintiff in a 
trademark infringement suit under the Lanham Act, § 1117(a), a court 
can award only profts ascribable to the “defendant” itself. And the 
term “defendant” bears its usual legal meaning: the party against whom 
relief or recovery is sought—here, Dewberry Group. The Engineers 
chose not to add the Group's affliates as defendants. Accordingly, the 
affliates' profts are not the (statutorily disgorgable) “defendant's 
profts” as ordinarily understood. 
Nor do background principles of corporate law convert the one into 
the other. This Court has often read federal statutes to incorporate 
such principles. So if corporate law treated all affliated companies as 
“a single corporate entity,” there could be reason to construe the term 
“defendant” in the same vein. See United States v. Bestfoods, 524 U. S. 
51, 62. But the usual rule is the opposite. “[I]t is long settled as a 
matter of American corporate law that separately incorporated organi-
zations are separate legal units with distinct legal rights and obliga-
tions.” Agency for Int'l Development v. Alliance for Open Society 
Int'l Inc., 591 U. S. 430, 435. And that is so even if the entities are

Page Proof Pending Publication
322 DEWBERR Y GROUP, INC. v. DEWBERRY ENGINEERS INC. 
Syllabus 
affliated—as they are here by virtue of having a common owner. 
While a court may in select circumstances “pierc[e] the corporate veil,” 
especially to prevent corporate formalities from shielding fraudulent 
conduct, Bestfoods, 524 U. S., at 62, Dewberry Engineers admits that it 
never tried to make the showing needed for veil-piercing. So the de-
mand to respect corporate formalities remains. And that demand ac-
cords with the Lanham Act's text: The “defendant's profts” are the de-
fendant's profts, not its plus its affliates'. 
Dewberry Engineers does not contest these points; it instead argues 
that a court may take account of an affliate's profts under a later sen-
tence in the Lanham Act's remedies section: “If the court shall fnd that 
the amount of the recovery based on profts is either inadequate or ex-
cessive[,] the court may in its discretion enter judgment for such sum 
as the court shall fnd to be just, according to the circumstances.” 
§ 1117(a). In the Engineers' view, this so-called “just-sum provision” 
enables a court, after frst assessing the “defendant's profts,” to deter-
mine that a different fgure better refects the “defendant's true fnancial 
gain.” Brief for Respondent 24. And at that “second step” of the proc-
ess, the court can consider “as relevant evidence” the profts of related 
entities. But the District Court did not rely on the just-sum provision. 
It simply treated Dewberry Group and its affliates as a single corporate 
entity in calculating the “defendant's profts.” And the Fourth Circuit 
approved that approach, thinking it justifable in the circumstances to 
ignore the corporate separateness of the affliated companies. The just-
sum provision did not come into the analysis and therefore does not 
support the $43 million award given. 
In remanding this case for a new award proceeding, the Court leaves 
a number of questions unaddressed. The Court expresses no view on 
whether or how the courts could have used the just-sum provision to 
support a profts award; whether or how courts can look behind a de-
fendant's tax or accounting records to consider a defendant's true fnan-
cial gain even without relying on the just-sum provision; and whether 
veil-piercing remains an available option. Pp. 326–330. 
77 F. 4th 265, vacated and remanded. 
Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Sotomayor, 
J., fled a concurring opinion, post, p. 330. 
Thomas G. Hungar argued the cause for petitioner. With 
him on the briefs were Helgi C. Walker, Jonathan C. Bond, 
Patrick J. Fuster, and Matt Aidan Getz. 
Nicholas S. Crown argued the cause for the United States 
as amicus curiae in support of neither party. With him on

Cite as: 604 U. S. 321 (2025) 323 
Opinion of the Court 
the brief were Solicitor General Prelogar, Principal Deputy 
Assistant Attorney General Boynton, Deputy Solicitor Gen-
eral Stewart, Daniel Tenny, Laura E. Myron, Farheena 
Rasheed, Mai-Trang Dang, and Giulio Yaquinto. 
Elbert Lin argued the cause for respondent. With him 
on the brief were Stephen P . Demm, David M. Parker, 
David N. Goldman, and Arthur E. Schmalz.* 
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court. 
A prevailing plaintiff in a trademark infringement suit is 
often entitled to an award of the “defendant's profts.” 15 
U. S. C. § 1117(a). In making such an award, the District 
Court in this case totaled the profts of the named corporate 
defendant with those of separately incorporated affliates not 
parties to the suit. We hold today that the court erred 
in doing so. Under the pertinent statutory provision, the 
court could award only profts properly ascribable to the de-
fendant itself. 
I 
The trademark dispute here is between two unrelated 
real-estate companies with the word “Dewberry” in their 
names. 
Dewberry Engineers provides real-estate development 
services for commercial entities across the country, and par-
ticularly in several southeastern States. It owns a regis-
tered trademark in the word “Dewberry.” That mark gives 
Dewberry Engineers certain exclusive rights to use the 
“Dewberry” name in offering real-estate services. 
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the American 
Intellectual Property Law Association by Lauren Keller Katzenellenbo-
gen and Ann M. Mueting; and for the Washington Legal Foundation by 
John M. Masslon II and Cory L. Andrews. Megan K. Bannigan, Jared 
I. Kagan, and Thomas A. Agnello fled a brief for the International Trade-
mark Association as amicus curiae urging vacatur. 
Noel J. Francisco and Jennifer L. Swize fled a brief for Intellectual 
Property Scholars as amici curiae urging affrmance. 
Page Proof Pending Publication

324 DEWBERR Y GROUP, INC. v. DEWBERRY ENGINEERS INC. 
Opinion of the Court 
Dewberry Group is also a commercial real-estate company 
operating in the southeast. Owned by developer John Dew-
berry, it provides services solely to other, separately incorpo-
rated companies in his portfolio (about 30 in all). Each of 
those affliates owns a piece of commercial property for lease, 
but none has employees to carry out business functions. 
That is instead Dewberry Group's role. It affords the affli-
ates the services needed—fnancial, legal, operational, and 
marketing—to generate rental income from the properties 
they own. That income goes on the affliates' books; Dew-
berry Group receives only agreed-upon fees. And those fees 
are apparently set at less than market rates. According to 
its tax returns, the Group has operated at a loss for decades; 
it survives only through occasional cash infusions from John 
Dewberry himself. Meanwhile, the affliates—which, recall, 
he also owns—have racked up tens of millions of dollars in 
proft. 
The success of John Dewberry's overall business comes 
in part from trademark infringement—specifically, from 
Dewberry Group's violation of Dewberry Engineers' trade-
mark rights in the “Dewberry” name. (If that sentence is 
confusing—too darn many Dewberrys—it is also a good illus-
tration of why trademarks exist: to prevent consumers from 
being confused about which company is providing a product 
or service.) Dewberry Engineers has sought to defend its 
trademark rights against Dewberry Group for nearly two 
decades. In 2007, an infringement suit the Engineers 
brought against the Group led to a settlement limiting the 
latter's use of the word “Dewberry.” But a decade or so 
later, Dewberry Group reneged on the deal. As part of a 
rebranding effort, the Group resumed its use of the “Dew-
berry” name in the marketing and other materials it used to 
lease its affliates' properties. 
So Dewberry Engineers sued Dewberry Group again, and 
won decisively. The action—brought against Dewberry 
Group alone—alleged trademark infringement and unfair 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Cite as: 604 U. S. 321 (2025) 325 
Opinion of the Court 
competition under the federal Lanham Act, as well as breach 
of contract (i. e., the settlement agreement) under state law. 
The District Court found Dewberry Group liable on all 
counts. It was especially scathing about Dewberry Group's 
trademark infringements. Those violations, the court held, 
were “intentional, willful, and in bad faith.” 2022 WL 
1439826, *6 (ED Va., Mar. 2, 2022). Dewberry Group had 
encountered “numerous red fags alerting it to the illegality 
of its conduct,” yet continued to use the trademarked name. 
Id., at *2; see id., at *6. Those fndings of willful infringe-
ment, later affrmed by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth 
Circuit, are not before us. See 77 F. 4th 265, 289, 291 (2023). 
What remains in dispute is the District Court's award of 
profts to remedy the infringement. The Lanham Act pro-
vides for a prevailing plaintiff like Dewberry Engineers to 
recover the “defendant's profts” deriving from a trademark 
violation. § 1117(a). The sole named defendant here is 
Dewberry Group. But Dewberry Group, as noted above, re-
ports no profts. See supra, at 324. Rather, the District 
Court found, the profts from the Group's illicit conduct (as 
from all its services) “show up exclusively on the [property-
owning affliates'] books.” 2022 WL 1439826, *9. To refect 
that “economic reality,” the court decided to treat Dewberry 
Group and its affliates “as a single corporate entity” for pur-
poses of calculating a profts award. Id., at *10. If those 
companies were viewed separately, the court reasoned, the 
“entire Dewberry Group enterprise” would “evade the f-
nancial consequences of its willful, bad faith infringement.” 
Ibid. By contrast, considering the companies together 
would prevent the “unjust enrichment” that the Act was 
meant to target. Ibid. The court thus totaled the affli-
ates' real-estate profts from the years Dewberry Group in-
fringed, producing an award of nearly $43 million. See id., 
at *14. 
A divided Court of Appeals panel affrmed that award. 
Reiterating the “ `economic reality' of Dewberry Group's re-
Page Proof Pending Publication

326 DEWBERR Y GROUP, INC. v. DEWBERRY ENGINEERS INC. 
Opinion of the Court 
lationship with its affliates,” the majority approved the Dis-
trict Court's treatment of all the companies “as a single cor-
porate entity.” 77 F. 4th, at 290 (quoting 2022 WL 1439826, 
*10). That approach, the majority reasoned, properly 
“h[e]ld Dewberry Group to account” for its use of infringing 
materials to generate corporate profts. 77 F. 4th, at 293. 
It did not matter that the affliates, rather than the Group, 
“receive[d] the revenues” earned, given the links among 
those companies. Ibid. To hold otherwise, the majority 
thought, would give businesses a “blueprint for using corpo-
rate formalities to insulate their infringement from fnancial 
consequences.” Ibid. Judge Quattlebaum dissented. He 
would have held that the District Court had no authority, in 
calculating a defendant's profts, to “simply add the revenues 
[of] non-parties.” Id., at 300. 
We granted certiorari, 602 U. S. 1038 (2024), and we now 
vacate the decision below. 
II 
The statutory text authorizing a profts award for trade-
mark infringement offers no support for the approach the 
courts below took. Again, the section of the Lanham Act 
addressing remedial issues provides that a plaintiff like Dew-
berry Engineers is “entitled” to “recover [the] defendant's 
profts.” § 1117(a); see supra, at 325. The term “defend-
ant” is not specially defned, and thus bears its usual legal 
meaning. A “defendant” is “the party against whom relief 
or recovery is sought in an action or suit.” Black's Law Dic-
tionary 541 (3d ed. 1933). So here the defendant is the en-
tity named in Dewberry Engineers' complaint as liable for 
infringing the “Dewberry” trademark. And that entity is 
Dewberry Group alone. See App. 1 (“The Plaintiff, Dew-
berry Engineers . . . fles this Complaint against the Defend-
ant, Dewberry Group”). The Engineers chose not to add the 
Group's property-owning affliates as defendants. Accord-
ingly, the affliates' profts are not the (statutorily disgorg-
able) “defendant's profts” as ordinarily understood. 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Cite as: 604 U. S. 321 (2025) 327 
Opinion of the Court 
Nor do background principles of corporate law convert the 
one into the other. We have often read federal statutes to 
incorporate such principles, on the view that Congress would 
not have wanted to displace “bedrock” features of the com-
mon law. United States v. Bestfoods, 524 U. S. 51, 62 (1998). 
So if corporate law treated all affliated companies as (in the 
District Court's phrase) “a single corporate entity,” we might 
construe the term “defendant” in the same vein—as sweep-
ing in the named defendant's affliates because they lack a 
distinct identity. But in fact the usual rule is the opposite. 
“[I]t is long settled as a matter of American corporate law 
that separately incorporated organizations are separate legal 
units with distinct legal rights and obligations.” Agency for 
Int'l Development v. Alliance for Open Society Int'l Inc., 
591 U. S. 430, 435 (2020). And that is so even if the entities 
are affliated—as they are here by virtue of having a common 
owner. See ibid.; Dole Food Co. v. Patrickson, 538 U. S. 468, 
474–475 (2003). To be sure, the “principle[ ] of corporate 
separateness” has exceptions: A court may in select circum-
stances “pierc[e] the corporate veil,” especially to prevent 
corporate formalities from shielding fraudulent conduct. 
Bestfoods, 524 U. S., at 62; Dole Food, 538 U. S., at 475. But 
Dewberry Engineers, as it admits, never tried to make the 
showing needed for veil-piercing. See Brief for Respondent 
52, n. 8. So the demand to respect corporate formalities re-
mains. And that demand fts hand-in-glove with the Lan-
ham Act's text: Again, the “defendant's profts” are the de-
fendant's profts, not its plus its affliates'. 
Dewberry Engineers cannot, and so does not, contest those 
points; to defend the decisions below, it must set off on a 
different path, involving different statutory language. True 
enough, concede the Engineers, that a court has no authority 
to “disregard corporate separateness” and order disgorge-
ment of an affliate's profts as the “defendant's” own. Id., 
at 2. But a court, the company says, may take account of 
an affliate's profts in another way. Dewberry Engineers 
Page Proof Pending Publication

328 DEWBERR Y GROUP, INC. v. DEWBERRY ENGINEERS INC. 
Opinion of the Court 
here invokes a later sentence in the Act's remedies section: 
“If the court shall fnd that the amount of the recovery based 
on profts is either inadequate or excessive[,] the court may 
in its discretion enter judgment for such sum as the court 
shall fnd to be just, according to the circumstances.” 
§ 1117(a). In the Engineers' view, that so-called just-sum 
provision enables a court, after frst assessing the “defend-
ant's profts,” to determine that a different fgure better re-
fects the “defendant's true fnancial gain.” Id., at 24. And 
at that “second step” of the process, the court can consider 
“as relevant evidence” the profts of related entities—for ex-
ample, to see if the defendant diverted some of its earnings 
to an affliate's books. Id., at 1, 38. Finally, Dewberry En-
gineers contends that the courts below in fact followed that 
approach. In other words, those courts merely considered 
the affliates' profts as evidence in assessing Dewberry 
Group's “true fnancial gain” under the just-sum provision. 
Id., at 40. 
But that is not a tenable take on why Dewberry Engineers 
got a $43 million award. The District Court did not rely on 
the just-sum provision, or suggest that it was departing up 
from Dewberry Group's reported profts to refect the com-
pany's true gain. There was no two-step process for decid-
ing on the award, but only a single step: the calculation of 
the “defendant's profts.” 2022 WL 1439826, *14; see id., at 
*9–*10. And in making that assessment, the District Court 
designated whose profts should count: both Dewberry 
Group's and its affliates', because all those companies should 
be “treated as a single corporate entity.” Ibid. That treat-
ment, by its terms, disregards “corporate formalities”—and 
likewise the “principle[ ] of corporate separateness.” Dole 
Food, 538 U. S., at 476; Bestfoods, 524 U. S., at 62. The 
proof, if any more were needed, is in the number the court 
arrived at. It was simply the sum of all the Dewberry enti-
ties' real-estate profts for the relevant years. That amount 
accords with the idea that Dewberry Group and its affliates 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Page Proof Pending Publication
Cite as: 604 U. S. 321 (2025) 329 
Opinion of the Court 
should be regarded as one—as in toto the “defendant.” But 
it conficts with the Engineers' alternative understanding of 
what happened below. For a court adopting the Engineers' 
view would have had to identify which of the affliates' 
profts were properly attributable to Dewberry Group, as 
refecting the Group's own gain. And the court could not 
plausibly have concluded that all of them were, given (at a 
minimum) that the affliates owned the rent-producing prop-
erties. The only way to reach the District Court's wholesale 
result was to take a simpler tack: to lump together Dewberry 
Group and its affliates as (in the court's own words) a sin-
gle entity. 
So too, the Court of Appeals' decision bears no resem-
blance to Dewberry Engineers' description. No more than 
the District Court did the Fourth Circuit rely on the just-
sum provision, or on any “second-step” analysis that it en-
ables. The Court of Appeals related, in straightforward 
manner, the basis of the District Court's decision: The lower 
court, to determine profts, “treated Dewberry Group and its 
affliates as a single corporate entity.” 77 F. 4th, at 290. 
And the appellate court approved that treatment for much 
the same reasons the District Court gave—because of the 
“economic reality” of how the Dewberry companies operated 
and the fear that “corporate formalities” would otherwise 
insulate infringing conduct from any penalty. See ibid.; id., 
at 293; supra, at 325–326. The concern in such circum-
stances is not amiss. But as even the Engineers agree, it 
cannot justify ignoring the distinction between a corporate 
defendant (i. e., Dewberry Group) and its separately incorpo-
rated affliates. By treating those entities as one and the 
same, the courts below approved an award including non-
defendants' profts—and thus went further than the Lanham 
Act permits. 
In remanding this case for a new award proceeding, we 
leave a number of questions unaddressed. First, we express 
no view on Dewberry Engineers' understanding of the just-

Page Proof Pending Publication
330 DEWBERR Y GROUP, INC. v. DEWBERRY ENGINEERS INC. 
Sotomayor, J., concurring 
sum provision. We have concluded only that the courts 
below did not invoke that provision to support the $43 mil-
lion award. Whether (or how) they could have used the pro-
vision is not properly before us; still less is whether Dew-
berry Engineers may press its just-sum theory on remand 
given forfeiture rules. Second, we also state no view on the 
position of the Government respecting when courts, even 
without relying on the just-sum provision, can look behind a 
defendant's tax or accounting records to consider “the eco-
nomic realities of a transaction” and identify the defendant's 
“true fnancial gain.” Brief for United States as Amicus 
Curiae 13; see id., at 18–22, 30–34; Tr. of Oral Arg. 36–41. 
Again, it is now up to the lower courts to decide whether to 
consider the Government's proposals. And third, we offer 
no opinion on whether, as raised during oral argument here, 
corporate veil-piercing is an available option on remand. 
See id., at 77; Brief for Respondent 52, n. 8. 
All we hold today is that the courts below were wrong to 
treat Dewberry Group and its affliates as a single entity in 
calculating the “defendant's profts.” Dewberry Group is 
the sole defendant here, and under that language only its 
own profts are recoverable. 
We therefore vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals 
and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with 
this opinion. 
It is so ordered. 
Justice Sotomayor, concurring. 
I join in full the Court's opinion, which holds that courts 
must respect principles of corporate separateness in calculat-
ing a “defendant's profts” for purposes of the Lanham Act. 
See ante, at 327 and this page. Those principles and the Lan-
ham Act's plain text prohibited the lower courts from attribut-
ing to Dewberry Group all the profts of its affliates, absent 
veil piercing. See ante, at 326–327. Dewberry Group itself, 
however, reports no profts on its tax returns. It has oper-

Cite as: 604 U. S. 321 (2025) 331 
Sotomayor, J., concurring 
ated at a loss for decades, while its affliates have made tens 
of millions in profts with the aid of the Group's trademark-
infringing services. Before the lower courts, Dewberry 
Group indicated that its own tax returns should control the 
calculation of its profts, meaning that the Group would owe 
zero dollars in disgorgement.* 
I write separately to underscore that principles of corpo-
rate separateness do not blind courts to economic realities. 
Nor do they force courts to accept clever accounting, includ-
ing efforts to obscure a defendant's true fnancial gain 
through arrangements with affiliates. To the contrary, 
there are myriad ways in which courts might consider ac-
counting arrangements between a defendant and its affliates 
in calculating a “defendant's profts.” Two examples illus-
trate the point. 
First, consider a company that establishes a non -
arm's-length relationship with an affliate that effectively 
assigns some portion of its revenues to the latter. For in-
stance, if the company charges below-market rates to its 
affliate for infringing services, that arrangement might be 
seen as essentially assigning a share of the company's earn-
ings to its affliate in advance. The affliate's profts in that 
scenario might bear on what the company itself would have 
earned in an arm's-length relationship. Taking account of 
such evidence in calculating the company's profts would 
likely not transgress corporate formalities or the Lanham 
Act's text, so long as the court's focus remained on calculat-
ing “profts properly ascribable to the defendant itself.” 
Ante, at 323. 
This Court, moreover, has long recognized in the tax con-
text that it is possible to account for anticipatory assignment 
schemes without contravening principles of corporate sepa-
*See 77 F. 4th 265, 290 (CA4 2023) (“Dewberry Group presented evi-
dence that it `generated zero profts because the Dewberry Group, Inc. tax 
entity showed losses on its tax returns' ”); 2022 WL 1439826, *9, *13 (ED 
Va., Mar. 2, 2022); 10 App. in No. 22–1622 etc. (CA4), pp. 4958–4965. 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Page Proof Pending Publication
332 DEWBERR Y GROUP, INC. v. DEWBERRY ENGINEERS INC. 
Sotomayor, J., concurring 
rateness. See, e. g., Commissioner v. Banks, 543 U. S. 426, 
433 (2005) (“A taxpayer cannot exclude an economic gain 
from gross income by assigning the gain in advance to an-
other party”); Commissioner v. Sunnen, 333 U. S. 591, 604 
(1948) (similar); Lucas v. Earl, 281 U. S. 111, 114–115 (1930) 
(similar). That precedent may provide guidance in calculat-
ing a “defendant's profts” under the Lanham Act when 
courts are faced with similar arrangements, “ `however skill-
fully devised[,] to prevent [income] . . . from vesting even for 
a second in the man who earned it.' ” Banks, 543 U. S., 
at 434 (quoting Lucas, 281 U. S., at 115 (second alteration 
in original)). 
Second, courts calculating disgorgement awards might 
consider evidence that a company indirectly received com-
pensation for infringing services through related corporate 
entities. For instance, where there is evidence that a com-
pany charged below-market rates for infringing services to 
affliates, but a common owner made up the difference via 
cash infusions to the company, that evidence may bear on the 
company's profts under the Lanham Act. Indeed, such cash 
infusions may refect some portion of the profts that the 
company would have earned from its infringing services in 
an arm's-length relationship. See Brief for United States as 
Amicus Curiae 18–19. Again, drawing on such evidence in 
calculating a Lanham Act disgorgement award need not im-
permissibly attribute an affliate's profts to the defendant. 
This is all to say that principles of corporate separateness 
do not force courts to close their eyes to practical realities in 
calculating a “defendant's profts.” After all, the Lanham Act 
itself directs courts to calculate such profts “subject to the 
principles of equity.” 15 U. S. C. § 1117(a). Those principles, 
unsurprisingly, support the view that companies cannot evade 
accountability for wrongdoing through creative accounting. 
Equity “regards substance rather than form.” 2 S. Simons, 
Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence § 378, p. 40 (5th ed. 1941) 
(internal quotation marks omitted). And equity demands

Cite as: 604 U. S. 321 (2025) 333 
Sotomayor, J., concurring 
“the wrongdoer should not proft by his own wrong.” Liu 
v. SEC, 591 U. S. 71, 80 (2020) (internal quotation marks 
omitted). Congress enacted the Lanham Act, moreover, to 
ensure “trademarks [w]ould receive nationally the greatest 
protection that can be given them.” Park 'N Fly, Inc. v. 
Dollar Park & Fly, Inc., 469 U. S. 189, 193 (1985) (internal 
quotation marks omitted). Disgorgement awards play a 
leading role in that regime, and the text of the Act forecloses 
any claim that Congress looked favorably on easy evasion. 
Because this issue was not considered below within the 
right framework, the Court today rightly declines to decide 
exactly when and how courts may look beyond a defendant's 
books in calculating Lanham Act disgorgement awards. See 
ante, at 330. In new award proceedings on remand, how-
ever, the lower courts may explore that important issue and 
consider reopening the record if appropriate. See Zenith 
Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc., 401 U. S. 321, 331 
(1971) (“[A] motion to reopen to submit additional proof is 
addressed to [the trial court's] sound discretion”). Courts 
must be attentive to practical business realities for our Na-
tion's trademark laws to function, and the Lanham Act gives 
courts the power and the duty to do so. 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Page Proof Pending Publication
Reporter’s Note 
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication 
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination 
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of 
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions 
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of 
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and 
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was 
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may 
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant 
punctuation. The following additional edits were made: 
p. 330, line 4 from bottom: “forbade” is changed to “prohibited”

Retrieval chunks

• #1

  PRELIMINARY PRINT Volume 604 U. S. Part 1 Pages 321–333 OFFICIAL REPORTS OF THE SUPREME COURT February 26, 2025 REBECCA A. WOMELDORF reporter of decisions Page Proof Pending Publication NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before the bound volume is published. Users are requested to …

• #2

  the other. This Court has often read federal statutes to incorporate such principles. So if corporate law treated all affliated companies as “a single corporate entity,” there could be reason to construe the term “defendant” in the same vein. See United States v. Bestfoods, 524 U. S. 51, 62. But the usual rule is …

• #3

  sum provision did not come into the analysis and therefore does not support the $43 million award given. In remanding this case for a new award proceeding, the Court leaves a number of questions unaddressed. The Court expresses no view on whether or how the courts could have used the just-sum provision to support…

• #4

  *Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the American Intellectual Property Law Association by Lauren Keller Katzenellenbo- gen and Ann M. Mueting; and for the Washington Legal Foundation by John M. Masslon II and Cory L. Andrews. Megan K. Bannigan, Jared I. Kagan, and Thomas A. Agnello fled a brief f…

• #5

  lease its affliates' properties. So Dewberry Engineers sued Dewberry Group again, and won decisively. The action—brought against Dewberry Group alone—alleged trademark infringement and unfair Page Proof Pending Publication Cite as: 604 U. S. 321 (2025) 325 Opinion of the Court competition under the federal Lanh…

• #6

  lationship with its affliates,” the majority approved the Dis- trict Court's treatment of all the companies “as a single cor- porate entity.” 77 F. 4th, at 290 (quoting 2022 WL 1439826, *10). That approach, the majority reasoned, properly “h[e]ld Dewberry Group to account” for its use of infringing materials to g…

• #7

  District Court's phrase) “a single corporate entity,” we might construe the term “defendant” in the same vein—as sweep- ing in the named defendant's affliates because they lack a distinct identity. But in fact the usual rule is the opposite. “[I]t is long settled as a matter of American corporate law that separat…

• #8

  at that “second step” of the process, the court can consider “as relevant evidence” the profts of related entities—for ex- ample, to see if the defendant diverted some of its earnings to an affliate's books. Id., at 1, 38. Finally, Dewberry En- gineers contends that the courts below in fact followed that approach…

• #9

  the District Court did the Fourth Circuit rely on the just- sum provision, or on any “second-step” analysis that it en- ables. The Court of Appeals related, in straightforward manner, the basis of the District Court's decision: The lower court, to determine profts, “treated Dewberry Group and its affliates as a s…

• #10

  treat Dewberry Group and its affliates as a single entity in calculating the “defendant's profts.” Dewberry Group is the sole defendant here, and under that language only its own profts are recoverable. We therefore vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent…

• #11

  ing “profts properly ascribable to the defendant itself.” Ante, at 323. This Court, moreover, has long recognized in the tax con- text that it is possible to account for anticipatory assignment schemes without contravening principles of corporate sepa- *See 77 F. 4th 265, 290 (CA4 2023) (“Dewberry Group presented…

• #12

  principles of equity.” 15 U. S. C. § 1117(a). Those principles, unsurprisingly, support the view that companies cannot evade accountability for wrongdoing through creative accounting. Equity “regards substance rather than form.” 2 S. Simons, Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence § 378, p. 40 (5th ed. 1941) (internal quo…

• #13

  punctuation. The following additional edits were made: p. 330, line 4 from bottom: “forbade” is changed to “prohibited”