J&J health care drop Red Cross lawsuit

Johnson & Johnson, the health care products and cosmetics compny, said it will drop its trademark-infringement lawsuit against the American Red Cross, a month after a federal judge threw out four of its seven claims against the charitable organization.

J&J and Red Cross settled all claims and counterclaims and will continue selling products with the emblem used by both organizations for more than a century, Tootoo.com learned from a joint-statement.

Red Cross was sued last August, accused of wrongfully licensing the symbol to third-party manufacturers to make emergency-preparedness kits and other products. J&J, which holds a family of trademarks for the symbol, claimed the charity agreed decades ago to not profit from the emblem's use.

"Johnson & Johnson brought the lawsuit very reluctantly, only to protect what we believed were important trademark issues," J&J chief executive Wil liam Weldon said in the statement. The company and the charity coexisted peacefully until the American Red Cross decided to use the emblem on commercial products, the company said in court papers