A US federal judge has asked Impossible Foods to pay the attorneys’ fees incurred by influencer Joel Runyon and his company Impossible HQ after his $3.25M trademark victory in March.
Plant-based meat giant Impossible Foods has been asked by a federal judge to compensate health influencer Joel Runyon for attorneys’ fees after the latter won a trial over his company’s use of the ‘Impossible’ name.
Runyon is the founder of Impossible X (doing business as Impossible HQ), and has been entangled in a legal tussle with the Californian meat alternative maker for nearly five years.
In March, an eight-person jury in the US District Court for the Northern District of California unanimously issued a verdict in Runyon’s favour, finding that Impossible Foods wilfully and maliciously infringed two of the entrepreneur’s registered trademarks.
It asked Impossible Foods to pay the entrepreneur $1.5M in compensatory damages and another $1.75M in punitive damages, and Runyon has since sought recovery of his legal fees, too.
Last week, Judge Beth Labson Freeman in the US District Court for the Northern District of California ordered Impossible Foods to pay Runyon’s attorneys’ fees, accusing it of forcing a trial on trademark claims without introducing substantive evidence.
“The court accords some weight to Impossible LLC’s argument that considerations of fairness and compensation favor awarding attorneys’ fees,” Freeman stated in her ruling.
“Mr Runyon avers that he has spent more than $6 million during the prosecution of this case, which he partially funded by liquidating his retirement accounts. Given the disparity between the jury’s award and Impossible LLC’s expenses, awarding attorneys’ fees in this case is appropriate.”
Court grants ‘exceptional circumstances’ claim for Impossible HQ
The court rejected Impossible Foods’s laches motion (a defence claiming that the plaintiff unreasonably delayed bringing a lawsuit). The company argues that Runyon knew about the plant-based meat maker’s challenged use of the trademarks “by 2015 or 2016, but did not assert claims until he filed his counterclaims in 2024”.
This, it claimed, was “unreasonable and prejudicial” to Impossible Foods because allowing Runyon’s company to wait, consider its options for nearly a decade, and then sue for damages based “solely on Impossible Foods’s own expenses”, harms the meat alternative firm “much more” than if Impossible HQ had sued when it had first learned of the trademark use.
The jury’s wilfulness finding was found “fatal” for Impossible Foods’ laches defense.
US law states that a court may award reasonable attorneys’ fees to a party in “exceptional circumstances”, and the Californian court agreed that Impossible Foods’s willful infringement of Impossible HQ’s trademarks supports the latter’s case for an exception.
“Although the court disagrees with the scope and magnitude of Impossible LLC’s frivolousness arguments, Impossible LLC identifies certain ‘weak legal positions on the merits (not frivolous but bordering on the frivolous)’ that also justify an exceptional case finding,” Freeman ruled.
She added: “While the court does not agree that Impossible Foods’s claims and defenses were entirely frivolous, the court finds that its abandonment defense and affirmative infringement claims were exceptionally weak, particularly as presented to the jury at trial.
“Having considered the totality of the case, including by weighing the seriousness of Impossible Foods’s conduct and its willful infringement, the court agrees with Impossible LLC that the case was exceptional and grants Impossible LLC’s request for an award of reasonable attorneys’ fees.”
Impossible HQ granted injunctive relief
The judge noted that it was “objectively unreasonable” for Impossible Foods to force a trial on certain trademark infringement claims before “neglecting to present any evidence at all”.
“Impossible Foods’ evidentiary presentation on its own infringement case was clearly deficient, consisting primarily of a law firm paralegal perfunctorily reciting Impossible Foods’s trademark registrations,” she added.
That said, Freeman disagreed with Impossible HQ’s suggestion that the plant-based company’s litigation strategy was unfair, stating that a failure to settle the case early is not a ground for an exceptional case finding. “Before trial, it appeared to the Court that a jury could reasonably credit either party – the fact that the jury chose Impossible LLC does not mean that Impossible Foods acted unreasonably,” she said.
She also rejected Runyon’s request for enhanced damages. “The court is more than satisfied based on the facts presented to the jury that its award fully compensates Impossible LLC, and any enhancement in damages would be punitive rather than compensatory,” her ruling stated.
The court did grant Impossible HQ injunctive relief, prohibiting Impossible Foods from using the standalone term ‘Impossible’ without other visible words or symbols on apparel, cookbooks or recipes.
“Any such materials that presently exist, whether in physical or digital form, shall be removed from public access and/or consumption within 14 days following entry of this order,” the judge outlined.
Why Impossible Foods and Impossible HQ went to court
Runyon had been using the ‘Impossible’ name for his lifestyle and fitness blog since 2010, before evolving it into a business and registering several federal trademarks in endurance athletics, apparel, health and nutrition, sporting events, and other areas.
In 2013, Impossible Foods sought to rebrand from its then-name, Maraxi, to its current name. In the years that followed, the brand became a global powerhouse in the plant-based industry through its meat alternatives.
It was in 2020 when Impossible Foods applied for a formative trademark for the ‘Impossible’ name for recipes, ingredients and cooking information, as well as an online database featuring this information.
This led Runyon to send a cease-and-desist letter to Impossible Foods in 2020, asking it to limit the use of the ‘Impossible’ name to “plant-based food substitutes” and opposing its bid to register the trademark for recipes.
Impossible Foods then sued Impossible HQ in 2021, seeking a declaration that it had superior rights to the name and did not infringe on Runyon’s trademarks. However, the court in Northern California dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, finding that the dispute didn’t relate to Impossible HQ’s California activities because Runyon had already left the state by the time the case was filed.
An appeals court reinstated the case in 2023 and ruled that the two companies could refile their claims, reasoning that Impossible HQ was originally founded in San Diego and thus fell under California’s jurisdiction.
At trial, a jury ruled that the plant-based meat maker infringed Impossible HQ’s unregistered trademarks for apparel and cookbooks, but rejected HQ’s bid to invalidate four of those marks.
This marks the second IP case Impossible Foods has lost in as many years. In 2025, it lost a four-year-long trademark battle with Impossible Bakers, a Spanish bakery, with an EU court finding that the latter’s brand is distinct enough from the plant-based meat company’s and that it can continue using the ‘Impossible’ name.
Green Queen has reached out to Impossible Foods and Impossible HQ after hours for a comment on this story.
