Ritchie v. Simpson: Trademarks | Outside IP Counsel

In reviving oppositions to O.J. Simpson's marks, the Federal Circuit held any opposer with a real interest and a reasonable belief of damage may be heard.

When O.J. Simpson’s lawyers filed federal trademark applications for O.J. SIMPSON, O.J., and THE JUICE in the mid-1990s, the objection that mattered came not from a competitor but from a private citizen. Ritchie v. Simpson, 170 F.3d 1092, 50 U.S.P.Q.2d 1023 (Fed. Cir. 1999), decided March 15, 1999, is the Federal Circuit’s foundational statement of who may oppose a trademark registration before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Writing for a divided panel, Judge S. Jay Plager held that Section 13 of the Lanham Act opens the opposition door to any person who can show a real interest in the proceeding and a reasonable basis in fact for believing the registration will cause him damage. No commercial stake is required.

The decision matters far beyond its tabloid facts. Every TTAB opposition and cancellation since 1999 has been filtered through Ritchie’s two-part test, and even after the Federal Circuit rebranded the inquiry in 2020 as entitlement to a statutory cause of action, the operative questions remain the ones Ritchie framed.

At a glance

Case: Ritchie v. Simpson, 170 F.3d 1092, 50 U.S.P.Q.2d 1023 (Fed. Cir. 1999) (No. 97-1371)
Decided: March 15, 1999; opinion by Judge Plager, joined by Judge Rader; Judge Newman dissented; TTAB dismissal reversed and remanded
Holding: An opposer satisfies 15 U.S.C. § 1063 by pleading a real interest in the proceeding and a reasonable basis in fact for a belief of damage; the interest need not be commercial and need not be different in kind from that of the general public
Significance: Final; still the doctrinal backbone of TTAB entitlement, now administered under the statutory-cause-of-action framework of Lexmark and Corcamore v. SFM (Fed. Cir. 2020)

The statutory frame: “any person who believes that he would be damaged”

Section 13 of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1063, permits an opposition by “any person who believes that he would be damaged by the registration of a mark.” The text says nothing about competitors, commercial injury, or proprietary rights. But because “any person who believes” cannot be read literally without inviting every disgruntled citizen into the Patent and Trademark Office, decades of case law under the statute and its cancellation counterpart, 15 U.S.C. § 1064, had glossed the phrase with limiting principles: the opposer must be more than a “mere intermeddler,” and the claimed damage must be more than a subjective grievance.

An important structural point underlies the whole dispute. Opposition proceedings are administrative, and the Federal Circuit reiterated in Ritchie that the case-or-controversy limits of Article III do not constrain the Board the way they constrain federal courts. What the statute demands is a legislatively conferred right to be heard, and the fight in Ritchie was over how wide Congress drew that grant.

The Board says no: a family man versus The Juice

Simpson’s four applications covered an assortment of merchandise: figurines, trading cards, sportswear, medallions, coins, and prepaid telephone cards. William B. Ritchie, a private citizen, opposed all of them. He pleaded two grounds: that the marks were immoral or scandalous matter barred by Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, because in the wake of Simpson’s criminal trial the names had become synonymous, in Ritchie’s words, with a wife-beater and murderer; and that one of the marks was primarily merely a surname barred by Section 2(e)(4). Ritchie described himself as a family man who believed in the sanctity of marriage, and he tendered petitions signed by others who shared his view that registration would demean those values.

The Board dismissed the oppositions without reaching the merits, holding in a December 1996 decision that Ritchie lacked standing. In the Board’s view his allegations attacked Simpson’s conduct rather than the marks, and he had not pleaded a reasonable basis for believing that he personally would be damaged, as opposed to being offended in the way any member of the public might be.

The Federal Circuit’s two-part answer

The Federal Circuit reversed. Judge Plager distilled the case law into the formulation that still governs: an opposer must demonstrate, first, a real interest in the proceeding, meaning a direct and personal stake in its outcome rather than the detached curiosity of an intermeddler, and second, a reasonable basis for the belief of damage, an objective requirement grounded in fact rather than mere say-so.

The court then rejected the gloss the Board had added. Nothing in Section 13 requires the opposer’s interest to be proprietary, commercial, or different in kind from interests held by other members of the public. A belief of damage widely shared is not thereby disqualified; on the contrary, the petitions Ritchie gathered were evidence that his belief had an objective footing. As the court put it, “The crux of the matter is not how many others share one’s belief that one will be damaged by the registration, but whether that belief is reasonable and reflects a real interest in the issue.” The reasonable-basis element can be satisfied by showing that the opposer possesses a trait or characteristic that the mark implicates, or by objective evidence, such as surveys or petitions, that others share the asserted concern.

The panel tied this reading to the policy of the scandalousness bar itself. Whether matter is scandalous is measured against the sensibilities of the public, so the statutory scheme presupposes, and the opposition mechanism invites, participation by the very members of the public whose sensibilities are at stake. Screening them all out at the pleading stage would leave the Section 2(a) determination to examining attorneys alone. Because Ritchie’s pleadings met both requirements, the dismissal was reversed and the oppositions remanded for the merits.

Judge Newman’s dissent

Judge Pauline Newman dissented, and her objections anticipated debates that continue today. In her view the majority had stripped away the traditional requirement that an opposer show an interest beyond that of the general public, converting the Board into a forum for moral disapproval of applicants rather than a tribunal for resolving commercial disputes about source identification. She also raised a First Amendment concern about conditioning trademark benefits on social approval of the applicant. Two decades later the Supreme Court would vindicate that instinct on the substantive side: Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. 218 (2017), struck down Section 2(a)‘s disparagement clause, and Iancu v. Brunetti, 588 U.S. 388 (2019), struck down the immoral-or-scandalous clause, both as viewpoint discrimination. The ground Ritchie pleaded no longer exists. His procedural victory, however, outlived it.

From standing to statutory entitlement: Ritchie’s afterlife

For twenty years the Board and the Federal Circuit applied Ritchie’s two requirements under the label “standing.” In Corcamore, LLC v. SFM, LLC, 978 F.3d 1298 (Fed. Cir. 2020), the court retired the label, holding that the question is properly framed as entitlement to a statutory cause of action under the Supreme Court’s zone-of-interests and proximate-causation analysis in Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118 (2014). Crucially, Corcamore found no meaningful, substantive difference between the frameworks: a party with a real interest and a reasonable belief of damage remains entitled to petition, and the Board’s manual still cites Ritchie for both elements.

The modern framework has nonetheless shown teeth that Ritchie arguably lacked. In Curtin v. United Trademark Holdings, Inc., No. 23-2140 (Fed. Cir. May 22, 2025), the court held that a trademark law professor and doll collector, opposing RAPUNZEL for dolls purely as a consumer, fell outside the zone of interests protected by the descriptiveness and genericness bars she invoked. As of July 2026, the practical rule is that Ritchie’s generous gate remains open widest for grounds, like false suggestion under Section 2(a), whose statutory purpose protects non-commercial interests, while purely commercial registration bars increasingly demand a commercial opposer.

Open questions

Ritchie answered who may oppose, but its edges remain contested. How the Lexmark zone-of-interests filter maps onto each individual ground of opposition is still being worked out ground by ground; Curtin resolved it for descriptiveness and genericness claims brought by consumers, but other bars await definitive treatment. Whether petition evidence of shared concern, which Ritchie endorsed, still suffices to make a belief of damage objectively reasonable under the modern framing is untested. And Judge Newman’s structural worry, that broad entitlement invites oppositions driven by disapproval of the applicant rather than the mark, resurfaces whenever celebrity or politically charged applications draw citizen challenges.

Implications for brands and businesses

Expect challengers beyond your competitors. Entitlement at the Board is broader than Article III standing, and an opposition can come from trade associations, advocacy groups, or individuals who can articulate a real interest. Clearance and filing strategy should price in that wider field.
Plead entitlement deliberately. A challenger should build the record Ritchie contemplates: allege the specific interest at stake, tie it to the statutory ground invoked, and support the belief of damage with objective facts rather than conclusions. After Curtin, match the interest to the purpose of the particular bar.
Attack entitlement early when defending. Because entitlement is an element of every Board proceeding, a registrant facing a marginal opposer, particularly a consumer or ideological challenger relying on a commercially oriented ground, has a genuine threshold defense that can end the case before the merits.
Do not confuse the gate with the merits. Ritchie lowered the entry bar, not the proof bar. An opposer who gets past the threshold must still prove the substantive ground, and the grounds themselves have narrowed since 1999 as Tam and Brunetti removed the viewpoint-based bars.

Frequently asked questions

Does an opposer need a commercial interest to bring a TTAB opposition? No. Ritchie held that Section 13 of the Lanham Act requires only a real interest in the proceeding and a reasonable basis in fact for the belief of damage. A competitor’s commercial stake satisfies the test easily, but the statute does not demand one, which is how a private citizen was allowed to oppose O.J. Simpson’s applications.

Is Ritchie v. Simpson still good law after Corcamore? Substantially, yes. Corcamore v. SFM (Fed. Cir. 2020) retired the standing label in favor of entitlement to a statutory cause of action under Lexmark, but it held the frameworks are not meaningfully different: the Board still asks whether the challenger has a real interest and a reasonable belief of damage. Curtin v. United Trademark Holdings (Fed. Cir. 2025) shows the modern framework can be less generous to purely consumer interests.

Could Ritchie’s scandalousness claim be brought today? No. The Supreme Court struck down the disparagement clause of Section 2(a) in Matal v. Tam (2017) and the immoral or scandalous clause in Iancu v. Brunetti (2019) as viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment. The substantive ground Ritchie pleaded is gone, but the case’s answer to who may be heard at the Board survives.