Once upon a time, a toy company tried to trademark the name Rapunzel. A doll‑collecting law professor tried to scale the trademark tower, only to find that, as a mere consumer, she couldn’t even get through the gate.
Here’s how that story unfolded, and what it means for who gets to battle over trademarks at the USPTO.
Toy Shelf to Trademark Fight
United Trademark Holdings is a company that owns and licenses toy trademarks, including fairytale‑princess dolls sold under the name “Rapunzel.” Back in 2017, it applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a federal trademark registration of the word RAPUNZEL for “dolls and toy figures.” The trademark office approved the application for publication. That opened a short window where others can object before the mark is registered.
That’s when Rebecca Curtin stepped in. She’s a Boston‑area trademark law professor, a doll collector, and a mom who buys Rapunzel‑themed toys for herself and her daughter. She didn’t claim to be a competing toy maker or to have her own doll line. Instead, she cast herself as a consumer trying to protect the marketplace. And she filed a formal Notice of Opposition at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, the administrative tribunal that hears challenges to trademark applications under the federal Lanham Act.
Curtin argued that “Rapunzel” is just the name of a classic fairy‑tale character in the public domain, not a brand, so it’s generic or descriptive for dolls based on that character and not something one company should be able to lock up as its exclusive trademark. In that same filing, she also warned that registering RAPUNZEL could leave consumers with fewer choices, higher prices, and fewer fan‑made or small‑maker Rapunzel dolls. She backs these claims with her own purchase records and a petition signed by 432 others who share those concerns.
Board Says No Ticket for ‘Mere Consumers’
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board never reached the question of whether RAPUNZEL is a valid trademark for dolls. The case was stopped in its tracks when the Board asked a crucial preliminary question about standing: Is Rebecca Curtin even the kind of person the law allows to use this opposition process? To answer that, the Board looked at what the trademark law is generally trying to do.
In the Board’s view, the opposition and cancellation procedures were made not to protect shoppers, but people who are actually in business — companies that sell goods or services and whose commercial interests might be harmed by a registration. Curtin buys Rapunzel‑themed dolls and toys, but she doesn’t make or sell them herself or has any business plans tied to the name RAPUNZEL.
The Board also thought the harms Curtin described (less competition, higher prices, and fewer Rapunzel dolls on the market) were too theoretical and indirect. They reasoned that any real harm would first hit other doll makers, and only then might consumers feel it. On that basis, the Board said the statute doesn’t give “mere consumers” a ticket into this kind of case, and it threw out her opposition without ever deciding whether RAPUNZEL should be registered.
Appeals Court Doubles Down
Curtin appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which reviews the Board’s rulings, in a case now known as Curtin v. United Trademark Holdings. The circuit court largely accepted the Board’s framework, but added some important nuances.
The court emphasized that you can’t answer the question of standing in the abstract; you have to look at the specific legal grounds being asserted. For genericness, descriptiveness, and failure‑to‑function claims, the court said trademark law is protecting commercial interests. Those interests include preventing monopolies on common terms and keeping everyday language free for sellers to use. Because of that, the relevant “zone of interest” is businesses and other commercial actors, not consumers.
The panel also quoted the 2014 Supreme Court precedent of Lexmark International v. Static Control Components to stress that a harm is too remote if it is “purely derivative of misfortunes visited upon a third person by the defendant’s acts.” In Curtin’s case, the alleged harms were not just indirect but derivative: her injury depended entirely on other doll makers first being harmed by the registration. That, the court said, is the kind of downstream harm that falls outside the statute.
No Rescue from the High Court
After losing in the Federal Circuit, Curtin asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.
She bolstered her argument with an amicus brief from the Organization for Transformative Works, who stressed how fans and consumers have a real stake in keeping public‑domain characters like Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Santa Claus from being locked up as trademarks. The brief warned that if only businesses in the market can oppose trademark applications, you get a “collective action” problem: no single company has enough incentive to challenge every overreaching registration, but the public as a whole loses freedom to use shared cultural symbols.
SCOTUS, however, declined to hear the case without any explanation (which is standard for cert denials). That left the Federal Circuit’s decision in place—and because that court has exclusive jurisdiction over appeals from the USPTO, its ruling effectively sets the rules for TTAB oppositions across the country.
Who’s Left to Fight for Rapunzel?
In practical terms, at least for challenges that a mark is generic, descriptive, or doesn’t function as a mark, consumers who are only buyers (and not sellers) can’t use the opposition process to press those arguments. As a result, most of the work of pushing back against trademark claims on public‑domain characters now falls to companies with clear commercial stakes.
For now, the moral of the story is simple: if you’re not in the doll business, trademark law leaves you shouting up at Rapunzel’s tower from below.
Related Resources:
- How To Trademark a Business Name (FindLaw’s Learn About the Law)
- Top 6 Trademark Mistakes (FindLaw’s Law and Daily Life)
- A Guide to State Trademark Information (FindLaw’s Learn About the Law)
