Category Archives: Trademark

October 2026 Indiana Intellectual Property Litigation Update

30 Friday Oct 2026

Posted by in Copyright, Indiana, Intellectual Property, Litigation, Northern District of Indiana, Southern District of Indiana, Trademark

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October was quiet on the named-party side of the Indiana copyright and trademark dockets. One local trademark case was filed and received its own post. The remaining filings were the kinds this blog usually skips. Here’s an update on last month’s activity in Indiana copyright and trademark litigation:

Pending Lawsuits

EE Holding Group LLC v. PDGROWTH LLC, 1:24-cv-01895-JPH-TAB (S.D. Ind., filed Oct. 25, 2024). Closed. On December 22, 2025, the court entered a consent judgment and permanent injunction in favor of the plaintiff against PDGROWTH LLC and Patrick D. Garton, jointly and severally, in the principal amount of $750,000, and dismissed the case without prejudice.

Valcrum, LLC v. Dexter Axle Company, LLC, 3:24-cv-00190-DRL (N.D. Ind., filed March 1, 2024). Still pending. As of an August 10, 2026 order, fact discovery was extended to August 28, 2026, with expert and rebuttal deadlines running into late 2026 and mediation to be completed by February 10, 2027. Discovery disputes, including production of Microsoft Teams messages, continued through the fall.

The Evolutionary Level Above Human, Inc. v. Havel et al, 3:22-cv-00395-DRL (N.D. Ind., filed May 18, 2022). Still pending. On August 26, 2026, the court issued an opinion and order granting the plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment on certain copyright ownership and liability claims, denying other motions, and directing the parties to file status reports by mid-September 2026 on damages, remaining counts, and counterclaims. Activity has continued since.

Honest Abe Roofing Franchise, Inc. v. DCH & Associates, LLC et al., 2:22-cv-00387-JRS-MG (S.D. Ind., filed Sept. 7, 2022). Still pending. No public resolution appears on the docket since the September update.

Nickel and Dimes Incorporated v. Noah’s Arcade LLC et al, 3:23-cv-00699-CCB-SJF (N.D. Ind., filed July 25, 2023). Still pending. The case had been stayed in March 2025 pending a related insurance coverage action. The stay was lifted in early October 2026, and filings resumed.

Baskin-Robbins Franchising LLC et al v. Blu Moo Ice Cream Inc. et al., 1:24-cv-00293-JRS-CSW (S.D. Ind., filed Feb. 14, 2024). Still pending. No public resolution appears on the docket since the September update.

University of Indianapolis v. The Trustees of Indiana University, 1:26-cv-01669 (S.D. Ind., filed Aug. 11, 2026). Still pending. No answer or other substantive filings appear on the public docket since the complaint. The original post is here.

BioCote Limited v. BioBond Adhesives, Inc., 4:26-cv-00086 (S.D. Ind., filed Aug. 19, 2026). Still pending. No answer or other substantive filings appear on the public docket since the complaint. The original post is here.

New October Filings

Security Masters Corporation d/b/a Nelson Alarm v. D-N-A Integrators, Inc. et al, 1:26-cv-02112 (S.D. Ind., filed Oct. 1, 2026). Still pending. The complaint concerns a 2015 asset purchase agreement transferring the Nelson Alarm name and the later registration of nelsonalarm.net. The original post is here.

Stay tuned for updates.

September 2026 Litigation Updates

Federal Registration vs. Indiana State Trademark Registration

22 Thursday Oct 2026

Posted by in Indiana, Intellectual Property, Trademark

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Indiana will register a trademark for ten dollars. The filing is on INBiz. The term is five years. The Secretary of State wants a specimen showing the mark is already in use in the state. That is the whole transaction. It is useful. It is also the source of more confident emails than it deserves.

The Indiana Trademark Act, Indiana Code 24-2, is a state registry. It is not the Lanham Act with a smaller map. The Secretary of State’s own page says the office does not resolve ownership fights, and that accepting a filing does not establish rights in the mark. The applicant is told to check other states and the USPTO. A lot of applicants do not.

What the $10 actually buys

A live Indiana registration is evidence that you claimed the mark, for the goods or services you listed, as of the filing. It can support a state-law infringement claim. Common-law rights are preserved either way — IC 24-2-1-15 says the chapter does not wipe them out. If your customers, your sign, and your competitors are all in one Indiana county, the state filing can be a cheap way to put a date on the public record.

That is the “enough” case. A one-location shop. A local service name. No plan to ship, franchise, or open in Louisville. Even then, the filing does not clear the name. It records it.

Where it becomes a trap

The trap is treating the certificate like a deed.

It does not reach Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, or Michigan. A food truck that works the Indiana State Fair and a festival in Cincinnati is already outside the paper. It does not put the mark in the federal database that a later applicant’s search is built on. It does not stop someone else from filing at the USPTO. It does not give you nationwide constructive notice. It does not let you record with Customs. It does not, by itself, get you into federal court.

This blog has already watched the mismatch. In the Legacy chiropractor fight, one side filed a federal application and the other obtained an Indiana registration the same morning. Two offices. Two pieces of paper. One lawsuit in the Northern District. In Twisted Tater, the plaintiff had Indiana registrations — a logo from 2016, the word mark in April 2024 — and filed federally two days before the word-mark state filing. The state certificates did not end the argument. They became part of the complaint.

Same-day races are the tell. If both sides think a ten-dollar filing settles a name that has been in use for years, somebody has been reading the certificate as a judgment. The Secretary of State does not issue those.

The ® still does not attach

The federal registration symbol is for a mark the USPTO has registered. An Indiana certificate is not that. A pending federal application is not that either. Use TM until the federal registration issues, and only on the goods or services in that registration. The longer version is in the 2026 ® post.

Putting ® next to a state registration number is how a local filing becomes an exhibit in somebody else’s fraud paragraph. Do not do that.

Which one to file

File the state mark if you want a cheap Indiana record and you already use the name here. File federally if the name matters outside one market, if you want the presumptions that come with a Principal Register registration, or if you would rather be the person who shows up in a clearance search. The fee math for that filing is in the 2026 fee edition. The state fee is not a discount on the federal one. They are different rights.

You can hold both. Plenty of Indiana businesses do. Just do not tell a competitor, or a customer, that the INBiz receipt is the one that counts nationwide. The Secretary of State already told you it does not.

Stay tuned for the docket notes.

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis

What a Schedule A Case Is (and Why This Blog Usually Skips Them)

02 Friday Oct 2026

Posted by in Copyright, Indiana, Intellectual Property, Litigation, Northern District of Indiana, Trademark

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If you scan the Northern District of Indiana copyright and trademark indexes, you will keep seeing captions like Plaintiff v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A. That is not a missing name. That is the case. The real defendants – often dozens or hundreds of Amazon, eBay, Temu, or Shopify storefronts – are listed on a sealed exhibit filed with the complaint. Counsel asks for a temporary restraining order, an asset freeze, and leave to serve by email. Many of those defendants never appear. Defaults follow. The docket looks busy but the local story is thin.

These filings started as a Northern District of Illinois habit and migrated. Hammond now sees a regular diet of them. Some are trademark counterfeiting. Some are copyright. The plaintiff is often a brand or a designer with no Indiana office. The “Indiana” connection is venue and a magistrate who will sign a TRO. That is enough for the statute. It is not enough for the kind of post this blog is for.

This site follows named parties, local businesses, university marks, and the occasional food truck that could not sort out a cease-and-desist. A sealed schedule of overseas sellers does not give you that. There is usually no public complaint worth quoting, no Indiana hook beyond the case number, and no answer coming. When a Schedule A filing names a real local defendant or turns into something other than a default mill, it will earn a post. Until then, you will see those captions in the monthly wrap, if at all, and not as a standalone post.

Stay tuned for the cases with names on both sides of the “v.”

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis

Proper Use of the Federal Trademark Registration Symbol ® (2026)

30 Wednesday Sep 2026

Posted by in Federal Initiatives, Intellectual Property, Trademark

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As a trademark attorney, I almost always notice whether a company is using the federal registration symbol, ®. From time to time I look the mark up, and there is no registration. Sometimes there is not even an application.

That was the opening of the 2019 version of this post. The rule has not changed, but the mix-ups have gotten more creative.

You may use the ® symbol with a trademark only after the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a registration for that mark. Not after you file. Not after the application publishes. Not after an examining attorney issues a notice of allowance. After registration.

Using ® before that can get you into trouble. Knowing and willful misuse can be treated as an attempt to deceive consumers and can support a fraud theory. The USPTO has long said that honest confusion is more common than actual fraud. That is not a license to keep using it anyway.

What the Office still lists as “we hear this a lot”

TMEP §906.02, Improper Use of Registration Symbol, still recognizes the potential for misunderstandings in use of the registration symbol. Here are some common explanations that do not, by themselves, prove fraud:

  • mixing up trademark notice with copyright notice (© can go on a work at first publication; ® cannot go on a mark until registration);
  • the printer did not get instructions, or ignored them;
  • believing that an Indiana state registration, or a foreign registration, authorizes the federal symbol;
  • the registration covers only part of the brand block on the label;
  • the registration covers other goods, not these goods;
  • the registration expired or was cancelled and nobody took the ® off the packaging;
  • another registered mark on the same label is what the symbol was supposed to refer to.

If your facts sound like one of those, fix the artwork. Do not panic.

TM, SM, and ® are not interchangeable

TM means “we claim this as a trademark.” You can use it on an unregistered mark, a pending application, or a common-law use. It is a claim, not a government seal.

SM is the same idea for services.

® means “the USPTO has registered this mark.” It is the only one of the three that requires a live federal registration.

Putting ® on a website footer because the logo “looks official” is how this post keeps getting rewritten.

State registrations do not get you a ®

Indiana will register a trademark through the Secretary of State. That filing has a place. It is not a federal registration. It does not authorize use of the federal symbol. It does not give you nationwide constructive notice. It does not mean the USPTO agrees the mark is clear.

A business can hold an Indiana registration, a pending federal application, and common-law rights in a couple of counties at the same time. Only the federal registration – once it issues – supports ®. The other two support TM or SM, if you want a notice symbol at all.

This blog has already watched local fights where a same-day state filing and a federal application showed up in the same week. Different offices. Different rights. One symbol.

The registration has a scope. The symbol has to follow it.

A registration is for particular goods or services in particular classes. If you are registered for “restaurant services” and you start selling branded hot sauce, the sauce is not registered because the restaurant is. Use TM on the sauce until that class is actually on a certificate.

The same problem shows up in the other direction. The word mark is registered. The new logo is not. Or the logo is registered and the tagline is not. Or the registration lapsed last year and the corrugated box still has ® molded into it.

Look at the certificate. Then look at the thing in the customer’s hand. If they do not match, take the ® off the thing in the customer’s hand.

Pending, allowed, published – still no ®

A serial number is not a registration number. A notice of publication is not a registration. A notice of allowance on an intent-to-use application is not a registration. You still have to file a statement of use, survive examination of that statement, and wait for the certificate.

Intent-to-use applicants are frequent offenders. The mark is sitting in a pitch deck with ® already applied because “we filed.” You filed. You have not registered.

What to do instead

Use TM or SM until the registration issues. When it issues, put ® next to the mark as it appears in the registration, on the goods or services listed in the registration. If you have a house mark registered and a product name that is not, only the house mark gets the ®.

If a registration dies – cancelled, expired, surrendered – the symbol comes off. That includes leftover packaging, the Google Business profile, the email signature, and the sign by the highway.

If you are not sure whether the registration covers a use, that is a clearance question, not a typesetting question. The 2026 fee edition of Should You Register Your Trademark? is the companion piece on whether to file. This one is only about the little R.

Stay tuned for the usual copyright and trademark docket notes.

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis

Should You Register Your Trademark? (2026 Fee Edition)

23 Wednesday Sep 2026

Posted by in Trademark

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Clients still ask whether it is in their best interest to register a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The traditional short answer is still: yes, if at all possible, you should register your trademarks.

In January 2025 the USPTO threw out TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard, installed a single “base application,” and started charging extra when the application is incomplete or the goods are typed in free-form. If you bookmarked the 2019 version of this post, the dollar figures on it are antiques.

Registration is still not required. Common-law rights still arise from actual use. The first party to use a mark in commerce, or to file a bona fide intent-to-use application that later matures, still has the better claim in most fights. A registration on the Principal Register still does the useful things it did in 2019: nationwide constructive notice, a presumption of validity and ownership, the right to use the ® symbol, access to the federal courts on a clearer path, and a Customs recordation if you later need one.

None of that is free.

What the USPTO now charges to file

As of the January 18, 2025 fee rule – still the schedule in force in 2026 – an electronic application is:

  • $350 per class for a base application that meets the completeness rules and uses identifications taken from the USPTO ID Manual.
  • +$100 per class if required information is missing at filing (the “insufficient information” surcharge).
  • +$200 per class if any identification is entered in the free-form text box instead of the ID Manual.
  • +$200 per class for each additional 1,000 characters of identification beyond the first 1,000.

A clean one-class filing that uses Manual language and is complete on day one is $350 to the Office. A sloppy one-class filing can be $650 before an examiner has even looked at it. A two-class filing doubles those numbers. Paper filing is $850 per class. Do not file on paper.

Madrid/Section 66(a) applications coming in through WIPO are $600 per class.

Intent-to-use applications add a later bill. A statement of use or amendment to allege use is $150 per class electronically. Extensions of time to file a statement of use remain $125 per class.

What you will spend before you file

Clearance search. The USPTO’s public search system is free and is not enough. A focused knock-out plus attorney review for a single word mark is often in the $300-$600 range. A full U.S. search that includes federal, state, and common-law sources still runs roughly $700-$1,200 once you add professional review. Skipping the search to “save” money is how people fund later cease-and-desist letters and, occasionally, lawsuits this blog writes about.

Attorney time to prepare and file. For a straightforward one-class application, budget $500-$1,200 on top of the USPTO fee, more if the identification is odd, the mark is a logo that needs a description, or there are prior registrations to explain. Office actions are extra. Most of the attorney time after filing is spent answering the first office action, not filling in the form.

A realistic all-in number for a clean one-class use-based filing in 2026, search included, is about $1,200-$2,500. That is higher than the “approximately $800-$1,000” figure in the 2019 post, and it should be. The Office got more expensive. So did everyone else.

What you will spend to keep it

Federal registrations do not die of old age, but they do die of missed maintenance.

  • Section 8 declaration of use (years 5-6): $325 per class
  • Section 9 renewal (years 9-10, and every ten years after): $325 per class
  • Section 15 declaration of incontestability (optional, after five years of continuous use): $250 per class

A combined Section 8 and 15 is $575 per class. A combined Section 8 and 9 at the ten-year mark is $650 per class. Miss the window and you are filing a new application and starting over.

A few things the fee schedule will not tell you

Using the ID Manual is how you stay at $350. That is the Office’s way of saying it would like fewer homemade descriptions of “business services.” If your goods are not in the Manual, pay the $200 and write the identification correctly anyway. A cheap, wrong identification is more expensive than a surcharge.

An Indiana state trademark filing is a different animal and a different price. It is not a substitute for a federal registration if you sell across state lines, online, or anywhere the other party can find a lawyer. It can still be useful locally. It is not nationwide constructive notice.

Intent-to-use is not a loophole for skipping the search. You still have to use the mark, and you still have to pay for the statement of use.

So – should you register?

If the mark is a real business asset and you can budget the filing, yes. The 2019 conclusion still holds: economies rise and fall, and trademark rights can continue indefinitely. The difference in 2026 is that the Office will charge you more for an incomplete form and much more to keep a registration alive at year six and year ten.

Do the search. Use the Manual when you can. File the maintenance on time. And if someone has already sent you a letter about the name, that is a different post.

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis