Decisions · 86362968
In re Morgan Brown
Serial No. 86362968 · Decided 2016-07-14 · Sections 1 and 45 Unlawful Use Ex Parte Appeal
What happened
The Board refused registration of HERBAL ACCESS for retail store services featuring herbs because the store’s own specimen photographs and website showed it sells marijuana, and selling marijuana violates federal law even though it is legal in Washington State.
The marks
Applicant
HERBAL ACCESS
Retail store services featuring herbs (Class 35)
Cited registration
None -- unlawful use refusal under Trademark Act Sections 1 and 45; no registration was cited.
Not stated
Why this decision is significant
Precedential opinion establishing the modern framework for unlawful-use refusals of marks used with state-legal marijuana businesses: federal law (the CSA) controls regardless of state legality, record evidence such as the applicant’s own specimen and website can establish a per se violation, and a broad identification (‘herbs’) encompassing an illegal good cannot sidestep the refusal. It is already cited as authority by later decisions in this database (In re Brown, 119 USPQ2d 1350, cited in the decisions for Serial Nos. 86474701 and 87168058).
Research significance is Trademark Valet's editorial rating of how useful a decision is to practitioners. It is not a statement of precedential weight — that is the separate Precedential field, which comes from the Board.
The original record
Read the opinion and every filing on the Board's own docket. The summary above is our paraphrase, not a quotation from the opinion. The opinion is the authority.
Who checked this
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Provenance — Written from the opinion; research-significance tier confirmed.
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