District court improperly dismissed Bacardi’s challenge to the PTO decision for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Finding no provision in the Lanham Act that expressly precludes judicial review of a trademark registration renewal decision by the USPTO Director, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia has reversed a district court decision dismissing for lack of subject matter jurisdiction a lawsuit brought by Bacardi & Company, Ltd. under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) challenging the Director’s decision to renew a trademark some ten years after it had expired for the failure to pay the renewal fees. The case is the latest chapter in the long-running trademark ownership dispute over the HAVANA CLUB trademark, between Bacardi and a company owned by the Cuban government (Bacardi & Co. Ltd. v. USPTO, No. 22-1659 (4th Cir. June 13, 2024)).
Case date: 13 June 2024
Case number: No. 22-1659
Court: United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law
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