Court hits technologist with monetary remedies, permanent injunction
The American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) has won a lawsuit totaling $56,664 against a former technologist who repeatedly falsified ARRT’s trademarked credentials.
Along with paying $36,664 for trademark infringement and $20,000 for breach of contract, the errant tech, Carlos Gonzalez Jr., must pony up $115,800 to cover ARRT’s attorney’s fees and litigation costs.
ARRT announced the outcome June 21.
On top of awarding the monetary restitution, the U.S. District Court in Minnesota has forbidden Gonzalez from ever “directly or indirectly using, reproducing, copying or imitating ARRT trademarks, service marks and certification marks, or any similar mark, word or name that is likely to cause confusion or deceive.”
In handing down the decision, Senior U.S. District Judge David Doty points out that neither the protectability of the ARRT marks nor Gonzalez’s unauthorized use of the marks was material to the case.
Rather, Gonzalez “denies that his use of the marks was unlawful because he was not in competition with ARRT and did not try to pass the marks off as his own.”
More:
The court disagrees. Gonzalez’s conduction plainly violated the law. First, he used copies of the marks in offering his services to prospective employers, in clear violation of section 32(a) of the Lanham Act. … There is no reasonable dispute that Gonzalez’s forged ARRT credential card created a likelihood of confusion. It is not a reach to conclude that presenting a forged ARRT to prospective employers with the ARRT marks would create the false impression that he was accredited by ARRT. Indeed, Gonzalez’s most recent employer attested that she believed he was accredited with ARRT because of the falsified credentials, and that she would not have hired him absent ARRT credentials.”
Gonzalez’s recent misdeeds came to light in 2018, the decision shows, when he presented a seemingly valid ARRT credential card to apply for a job as a nuclear medicine technologist in Florida.
It turned out his ARRT certification had expired some 14 years prior.
“Gonzalez admits that he falsified the credential card by using someone else’s card and replacing the individual’s identification number, name and address with his own,” Doty’s decision reports.
The decision footnotes that Gonzalez earlier pleaded guilty to stealing credit cards from patients and served two years’ probation for the crime.
The court’s full decision is posted here.
The case follows an ARRT legal victory in 2019, when it sued a former technologist for $10,000 over falsified credentials.
In the June 21 announcement, the organization’s CEO, Jerry Reid, PhD, reiterates that “[a]nyone who uses RT or RRA as a certification mark must be certified and registered with ARRT. Our mission is to promote high standards of patient care, and we can only do that by ensuring that people who use our credentials have in fact met our standards.”
Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., ARRT evaluates, certifies and annually registers more than 345,000 radiologic technologists across the U.S.
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Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.