What do you think? Hoffman’s gut told him to litigate aggressively. But was that a smart move? Should he settle? Or should he press his case before a judge?

Jonathan Hoffman rushed to the local Target store and stood dismayed before a shelf filled with books and flash cards. His employee, he quickly decided, had been right. The products looked uncomfortably similar to the ones made by his family’s educational media company, School Zone Publishing. The composition, fonts, language, and concepts screamed copycat. Then he noticed the name of the competing publisher—Dogs in Hats—and it all made sense. Dogs in Hats was a startup founded by Peter Alfini, School Zone’s former vice president of national sales and marketing. Alfini had worked at School Zone for two years before resigning in February 2003, just a few months prior to Hoffman’s trip to Target. The departure had stung, even more so when Alfini hired two former School Zone designers to join his new venture. Now Dogs in Hats’
books and flash cards were sitting right next to School Zone’s in a chain that accounted for about 10 percent of School Zone’s sales. Alfini says he started Dogs in Hats with his own ideas and resources, and that he had more than a decade of experience in educational publishing before joining School Zone. But it seemed clear to Hoffman that Alfini had used School Zone—its talent, marketing plans, equipment, and contacts—to get Dogs in Hats off the ground. Hoffman was furious.
He immediately called a meeting of his executive team—which includes his mother, Joan, the company’s president and co-founder, and his sister, Jennifer Dexter, the vice president of design and development—and his attorney. They reviewed Alfini’s products and came to the same conclusion:
School Zone’s intellectual property had been stolen and the company had little choice but to take Dogs in Hats to court.