TTAB Grants Petition to Cancel Registration of BMF For Media Production Services Due to Nonuse as of SOU Filing Date

The Board granted a petition for cancellation of a registration for the mark BMF for a broad range of entertainment and media production services, finding that Registrant Byron Belin's mark was not in use for the recited services when he filed his statement of use in the underlying application. Belin's evasive testimony and lack of business records regarding use of the mark led the Board to find that Opposer Zuffa (an American sports promotion company specializing in mixed martial arts) had established nonuse by a preponderance of the evidence. Zuffa, LLC v. Byron Belin, Cancellation No. 92077633 (March 10, 2026) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Thomas W. Wellington).

To prove nonuse as of the SOU deadline, Petitioner Zuffa relied on indirect evidence and reasonable inferences to "prove a negative." Belin, when deposed in March 2024 - only four years after the relevant date - was asked whether he was using the BMF mark in connection with all twelve services listed in his registration when he signed his SOU in January 2020. His answer: "I don't recall." When pressed about advertising and first use dates for each of the twelve listed services, Belin repeatedly testified that he could not recall, or "my attorney has all that." The Board, citing Nationstar Mortgage LLC v. Ahmad, found Belin's testimony "not at all credible," noting that a person in his position "would normally be expected to know" basic information about his own alleged use of a mark.

Belin's documentary evidence fared no better. The only pre-deadline sales documents he produced were "seriously flawed:" a "sales receipt" and a "payment receipt" purporting to show a single sale or rental of prop money and a prop gun - documents that, as Beline admitted, were prepared by the buyer. The "sales receipt" had "BMF"on the letterhead; the "payment receipt" was addressed to HeataHD Visuals but was signed "Thanks, HeataHD Visuals." Belin admitted that he handwrote "For BMF Prop Money" at the bottom of the payment receipt. The Board was unmoved by the argument that selling prop money to a videographer constitutes use of a mark in connection with multimedia entertainment production services. "Put simply, we are not convinced that the single sale of “prop money” is tantamount to multimedia production services." 

Other evidence also fell short. A confidentiality agreement with a photographer was illegible and appeared to be signed by only one party. A declaration from a script writer was undated and had the declarant's own surname misspelled - including at the signature line. Agreements with actors showed only preparations for a production, not actual rendition of any listed services. And actual copies of the YouTube videos Belin claimed to have posted were never introduced into the record; providing a hyperlink, the Board reminded, is not sufficient to make content of record.

Drawing adverse inferences from both the evasive testimony and the absence of business records, and "left with no credible evidence in the record that Respondent, prior to January 30, 2020, used BMF as a mark in connection with the services listed in his registration," the Board found that Petitioner Zuffa had established nonuse by a preponderance of the evidence, and so it ordered that the BMF registration be cancelled.

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TTABlogger comment: In March 2025, Belin's trademark infringement action against rapper 50 CENT and several media companies was suspended pending the outcome of this cancellation proceeding. (C.D. Cal. Civil Action No. 2:21-cv-09586). The district court had dismissed the case in 2023 based on fair use under Rogers v. Grimaldi, but the Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded in view of the Supreme Court's Jack Daniels decision limiting the scope of the Rogers doctrine. The appellate court directed the district court to "consider in the first instance whether the defendants use the BMF mark as a trademark."

Text Copyright John L. Welch 2026.