CAFC Affirms TTAB: Mere Consumer Curtin Lacked Statutory Standing to Oppose RAPUNZEL for Dolls

Although one purpose of the Lanham Act is to protect consumers, whether a particular consumer has statutory standing to oppose or petition to cancel depends on the specific bases under the Lanham Act that he or she invokes. Here, the CAFC affirmed the Board's holding that "only commercial actors affected by the mark’s registration fall within the zone of interests to oppose the registration as generic, descriptive, or [failing to function as a trademark]." (emphasis supplied). The court upheld the Board's dismissal of mere consumer Rebecca Curtin's opposition to registration of the mark RAPUNZEL for dolls and toy figures on the ground of lack of statutory standing. Curtin v. United Trademark Holdings, Inc., 2025 USPQ2d 784 (Fed. Cir. 2025) [precedential].

The Board had applied the Lexmark framework as set out by the Supreme Court and applied in Corcamore, ruling that "[a] plaintiff may oppose registration of a mark when doing so is within the zone of interests protected by the statute and she has a reasonable belief in damage that would be proximately caused by registration of the mark." The Board observed that "mere consumers such as [Ms. Curtin] are generally not statutorily entitled to oppose registration under 15 U.S.C. § 1063."

The Board found that the claims made by Curtin did not fall within the zone of interests protected by the Lanham Act, and that Curtin's evidence was too "limited" and her injury "too remote" to establish proximate causation.

Curtin argued that Corcamore was a cancellation proceeding, not an opposition, but the CAFC saw no reason why the same test for statutory standing should not apply to each. Curtin pointed to the CAFC's Ritchie v. Simpson decision (finding that Mr. Ritchie had standing to oppose OJ Simpson's applications to register the marks O.J. SIMPSON, O.J., and THE JUICE under the immoral or scandalous provision of Section 2(a) because he had a "real interest" in the outcome of the opposition, and that his "belief of damage" (disparagement of his values as a "family man") had a reasonable basis in fact.

The court, however, observed that Curtin did not invoke the same provisions of the Lanham Act as did Ritchie. The provisions she relied upon require a commercial interest protected by the statute.

The interest protected by a particular provision of the Lanham Act should not be subject to a blanket rule that always assumes the intended protected interest is commercial. Instead, the protected interest should be evaluated based on the particular ground for the challenge, since there are clearly grounds against registration of a mark in the Lanham Act that are not intended to protect commercial interests. In the context of challenges to a trademark under the Lanham Act, both in the form of an opposition proceeding under § 1063 or a cancellation proceeding under § 1064, the zone-of-interests test should be tailored based on the specific bases cited for opposing registration or seeking cancellation of the registration for a mark.

The CAFC noted that Curtin did not contend that the subject mark was misleading or deceptive, and so the court need not consider "whether these provisions also protect commercial interests."

Turning to the second prong of Lexmark, Curtin alleged that, as a doll collector and mother to a young daughter, she is "a consumer who participates amongst other consumers in the marketplace for dolls and toy figures of fairytale characters, including Rapunzel." She maintained that injury would result from the registration of the RAPUNZEL mark because "[she] and other consumers will be denied access to healthy marketplace competition for products that represent Rapunzel if private companies are allowed "to trademark the name of a famous fairy tale character in the public domain." [NB: trademark is not a verb - ed.].

The court pointed out that Curtin did not provide "any arguments refuting the Board’s findings that her reliance on general economic theories without any case-specific data fails to establish a reasonable belief of proximate causation of injury." Curtin's alleged harms were insufficient to establish proximate causation because "they are downstream harms first suffered by a commercial actor" and "too remote to support a reasonable belief in injury."

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TTABlogger comment: Is the CAFC suggesting that UTM's trademark application should be re-examined? See this passage at page 4, quoting Heritage All. v. Am. Pol’y Roundtable, 133 F.4th 1063, 1071 (Fed. Cir. 2025): “The opposition provision of the Lanham Act says that registration generally follows when an opposition, if any, fails, but the stated precondition is that the mark at issue be a 'mark entitled to registration,' 15 U.S.C. § 1063(b), which might allow the PTO, after an opposition fails, to reconsider the examiner’s pre-opposition allowance."

Is a likelihood of confusion claim a commercial one, or does a mere consumer have statutory standing to bring the claim? What about Section 2(a) deceptiveness? How about functionality based on an expired patent?

Is a consumer ever directly damaged merely by registration of the mark? Isn't it the use of a mark that may cause injury?

Note that the court in several instances refers to "functionality" instead of "failure-to-function." See pages 3 and 18.

BTW: what happened to Curtin's fraud claim?

Text Copyright John L. Welch 2025.