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Intellectual PropertyThe Intellectual Property StrategistTrademarksFeatures

TTAB Allows for Non-User to Oppose Trademark for Reputational Injury

By Nicole D. Galli and Laura Talley Geyer
March 01, 2025

It is well-established that, in general, for a trademark owner to have standing to assert rights in a mark in the United States, the mark must be in use in the United States. Occasionally a U.S. court has recognized cross-border rights, where a product is in such wide use in a neighboring jurisdiction that it is effectively in use in the United States even if not directed at the United States. In a more recent case, although finding no standing in the case in front of it, a federal court noted that it was, however, possible that a nonuser could demonstrate entitlement to cancel or oppose by establishing either lost sales in the United States or reputational injury in the United States under 15 U.S.C. Section 1064(3), better known as Section 14(3) of the Lanham Act. See, Meenaxi Enterprise v. Coca-Cola, 38 F.4th 1067 (Fed. Cir. 2022). This section, which does not require that the party relying on it have a registration or use in the United States, provides grounds for attacking a trademark application or registration if, among other things, the mark at issue is being used to misrepresent the source of goods or services.

The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has now picked up that hypothetical and made it a reality in one of the first of its 2025 precedential decisions, sustaining Plumrose Holding Ltd.’s opposition to the attempted registration by USA Ham LLC of its mark “LA MONTSERRATINA” (the opposed mark) in the logo form pictured here for various meat products:

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