Opinions — Wednesday, June 24, 2026

The Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to defendants Open Cheer on U.S. All Star Federation's claims under § 32 and § 43(a)(1)(A) of the Lanham Act for infringement of its marks THE CHEERLEADING WORLDS (registered on the Supplemental Register) and WORLDS (common law). The court held that genuine disputes of material fact precluded summary judgment on whether the marks are descriptive with secondary meaning, though it affirmed that the marks are not inherently distinctive as suggestive marks. As a threshold matter, the court rejected USASF's preclusion argument, holding that Open Cheer's earlier dismissal with prejudice of an improperly pleaded affirmative defense challenging distinctiveness did not preclude Open Cheer from later contesting USASF's prima facie burden to prove distinctiveness at summary judgment, because genericness and lack of secondary meaning are defenses to the plaintiff's case, not true affirmative defenses under Rule 8(c).

The opinion is significant for its application of the imagination test and third-party need test to determine suggestiveness. The court held as a matter of law that WORLDS and THE CHEERLEADING WORLDS are not suggestive because they require no imaginative leap to connect them to an international cheerleading competition—"Worlds" functions as common shorthand for world championships (like "Regionals" or "Nationals"), and adding "Cheerleading" as a modifier produces only "a more natural pairing of words" without the clever double meaning present in Engineered Tax Services. The court distinguished Engineered Tax Services because that mark enjoyed Principal Register presumptions and involved a term ("engineered") susceptible to multiple plausible readings creating ambiguity, whereas here the phrases directly and obviously describe the service. However, the court reversed summary judgment because USASF had produced sufficient evidence—including third-party uses, duration of use since 2004, and claimed consumer recognition—to create genuine factual disputes on whether the marks, though descriptive, have acquired secondary meaning, an issue the district court resolved improperly by weighing evidence and discounting USASF's proof at the summary judgment stage.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the Eastern District of Virginia's dismissal of pro se appellant Stanley Sansone's claims challenging the USPTO's rejection of his patent application for a wearable thermal device. After the Patent Trial and Appeal Board twice affirmed the examiner's rejection of all claims in Application No. 16/255,511, Sansone filed suit in district court asserting what the court construed as civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985, claims under various criminal statutes, a Federal Tort Claims Act claim, constitutional claims, and a claim for contractual damages. The district court granted the USPTO's motion to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), finding Sansone failed to state a claim and that the cited statutes either contained no private right of action or no waiver of sovereign immunity.

On appeal, Sansone argued the district court misconstrued his complaints, which he characterized as alleging ultra vires administrative action and constitutional violations rather than claims under the cited statutes themselves. The Federal Circuit found no error in the district court's interpretation under the liberal construction owed to pro se litigants, but alternatively held that even under Sansone's preferred framing, the complaints failed to state a plausible claim because his allegations rested on inaccurate factual characterizations and legal misunderstandings—including treating the examiners' disputed factual findings on prior art as "falsifying the record" and applying what the court termed an "indisputably meritless" theory of 35 U.S.C. § 103. The court adopted the district court's Rule 12(b)(6) analysis and affirmed on alternative grounds, applying the Fourth Circuit's standard for facial plausibility.