Like many of our readers, we nodded along in agreement with the TTAB while reading the most recent Monster Energy opposition decision, Monster Energy Co. v. Cavaliers Hockey Holdings, LLC, Opp. No. 91240680 (TTAB Oct. 6, 2020) (hat tip to John Welch for his tireless blogging) . The Board held that the mark CLEVELAND MONSTERS (stylized) for a variety of merchandised goods was unlikely to be confused with MONSTER for energy drinks and various merch; jewelry, clothing, printed materials, and retail services present in both applications.

While the MONSTER mark was conceptually and commercially strong for beverages, the Board found that marks as a whole were quite different, and the teams’ longstanding use as CLEVELAND MONSTERS mark and its predecessor LAKE ERIE MONSTERS mark for the sports franchise. The considerable evidence of third-party registrations including MONSTER carried quite a bit of weight, finding that MONSTER was conceptually weaker and diluted for other products and services.

This got us thinking about how we’d use TM TKO’s tools to pull together this sort of evidence for a Board proceeding.

First, let’s pull evidence that MONSTER is diluted. The easiest way is a manual search of MONSTER marks by class (14 first, then 25, etc.; sort the results by owner, flag the key ones, and export a summary to Word format and export the TSDR status and title copies for the exhibit using the TSDR export button. Class 14 alone has 8 different owners other than Monster Energy with co-existing marks that included variations of MONSTER as a term. You would then repeat for each class that was at issue.

(You could also pull dilution evidence with a ThorCheck Term Coexistence search, looking for MONSTER in both marks and checking the “include non-exclusive term matches” box. This generates a report showing examples of MONSTER co-existence, with the most similar marks sorted in each class, and the report overall ordered by class.)

Second, let’s pull evidence that adding a term like CLEVELAND is enough to avoid confusion. We can use a ThorCheck Term Difference search, adding CLEVELAND as the term by which two otherwise-similar marks differ. Looking at the relevant classes, we see the CLEVELAND CAVALIERS and VIRGINIA CAVALIERS co-existing in a bunch of classes, plust marks like CLEVELAND AGAINST THE WORLD and DETROIT AGAINST THE WORLD and CLEVELAND BROWNS and BROWNS LONDON in Class 25, CLEVELAND ARMORY vs. THE ARMORY in Class 35, and more. After exporting these results (Word and TSDR), you can repeat for other city names and amass other evidence that consumers are used to a city name + nickname adequately differentiating two marks.

Finally, we can find examples of USPTO Examiners issuing refusals based on the common term MONSTER but letting the junior application through to publication. This obviously isn’t binding on the Board, but it doesn’t hurt to provide examples of other reasoned decisions that reflect your position. A quick manual search of just examples where both the senior and junior marks are still active and the junior mark has been published or registered finds over 100 examples, including more than 30 where the prior cited mark was a single word, as here. If we broaden the search out to those that co-existed at some point in the past but no longer do, we’d certainly find a number of additional examples.