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About a month ago, a federal judge in Virginia threw out a trademark lawsuit filed by candy giant Mars Inc. against Madison small-batch chocolatier and lawyer Syovata Edari.

But knowing that Mars probably hasn’t gotten in its last licks, Edari now has filed her own lawsuit against Mars, asking a federal judge to rule once and for all that CocoVaa, the name that Edari gave her chocolate start-up business, does not infringe in any way on Mars’ CocoaVia brand nutritional supplements.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Madison, is Edari’s attempt to head off any further legal trouble from Mars, which hasn’t yet dropped a challenge to Edari’s CocoVaa trademark, still pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

She said she’s also had discussions with Mars in which the company said it still intends to pursue legal action in court, leaving her to wait while it decides where and when to file another lawsuit against her and her business.

“I need this to be done,” Edari said, “so I decided to beat them to it.”