Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01157/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01157-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Joel L. Beling
Appellant
Ennis, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

JOEL L. BELING, DBA SUPA CHARACTERS PTY 

LTD,

Appellant

v.

ENNIS, INC.,

Appellee

______________________ 

2015-1157

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in Nos. 

91203884, 92055374.

______________________ 

Decided: June 3, 2015 

______________________ 

 JOEL L. BELING, Dallas, Victoria, Australia, pro se.

DANIEL J. CHALKER, Chalker Flores, LLP, Dallas, TX, 

for appellee. 

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, BRYSON and HUGHES, Circuit 

Judges.

Case: 15-1157 Document: 37-2 Page: 1 Filed: 06/03/2015
2 BELING v. ENNIS, INC. 

PER CURIAM. 

Joel Beling appeals from the Trademark Trial and 

Appeal Board’s dismissal on summary judgment of his 

petition to cancel Ennis, Inc.’s trademark. Mr. Beling

alleged that Ennis’s trademark is generic and merely 

descriptive of Ennis’s printing services, and was fraudulently procured. Because Mr. Beling failed to produce 

evidence sufficient for a reasonable person to find in his 

favor, we affirm. 

I 

On May 18, 2011, Mr. Beling filed an application to

register COLOR WARS based on his intent to use the 

mark in commerce. On February 15, 2012, Ennis filed an 

opposition to Mr. Beling’s application, alleging a likelihood of confusion with its trademark, the stylized version 

of COLORWORX shown below. Ennis had previously 

registered this mark for “printing services.” 

On March 25, 2012, in response to Ennis’s opposition, 

Mr. Beling filed a claim to cancel Ennis’s registration for 

COLORWORX. Mr. Beling alleged that Ennis’s mark

should be cancelled because it was generic, merely descriptive, and inherently incapable of distinguishing 

Ennis’s services1; and because Ennis submitted fraudu1 Mr. Beling’s “inherently incapable of distinguishing” claim is redundant of his genericness claim. See In 

re Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, & Smith, Inc., 828 F.2d 

1567, 1569 (Fed. Cir. 1987) (“Generic terms, by definition 

incapable of indicating source, are the antithesis of 

 

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BELING v. ENNIS, INC. 3

lent statements in the registration process. The Board

consolidated the opposition and cancellation proceedings 

on July 13, 2012. 

On April 16, 2014, Mr. Beling petitioned this court for 

a writ of mandamus. See In re Joel L. Beling, 562 Fed. 

Appx. 984 (Fed. Cir. 2014). He asked this court “to direct 

the [Board] to reopen discovery, to ‘create new laws’ based 

on the proposals he suggested before the [Board], to 

review his requests for disqualification, and to refund 

certain fees he paid.” Id. at 985. This court denied the 

petition, id., as well as Mr. Beling’s subsequent petition 

for rehearing en banc, In re Joel L. Beling, No. 14-135 

(Fed. Cir. July 22, 2014), ECF No. 9 (order denying rehearing en banc).

Meanwhile, the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment in the cancellation proceeding. On September 30, 2014, the Board granted Ennis’s motion for 

summary judgment, denied Mr. Beling’s cross-motion for 

summary judgment, and dismissed Mr. Beling’s cancellation petition with prejudice. The Board found that 

Mr. Beling failed to produce evidence to support each 

element of his fraud claims. The Board also found that 

Mr. Beling failed to produce any probative evidence of the 

public’s perception of Ennis’s mark to support its allegations that the mark was generic or merely descriptive. 

Finally, the Board denied Mr. Beling’s motion to exclude 

evidence as an estoppel sanction under Fed. R. Civ. P. 

37(c)(1). Mr. Beling appeals. We have jurisdiction under 

28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(B).

II

We review the Board’s decision to grant or deny summary judgment de novo. Lens.com, Inc. v. 1-800 Contacts, 

trademarks, and can never attain trademark status.”). 

We therefore do not address it separately.

 

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4 BELING v. ENNIS, INC. 

Inc., 686 F.3d 1376, 1378–79 (Fed. Cir. 2012). “Summary 

judgment is appropriate where the movant has established that there is no genuine issue as to any material 

fact and that . . . the movant is entitled to judgment as a 

matter of law.” Lincoln Logs Ltd. v. Lincoln Pre-Cut Log 

Homes, Inc., 971 F.2d 732, 734 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (citations 

omitted). 

A 

A petitioner seeking to cancel a trademark based on 

fraudulent procurement bears a heavy burden of proof. In 

re Bose Corp., 580 F.3d 1240, 1243 (Fed. Cir. 2009). The 

petitioner must prove with clear and convincing evidence 

that the applicant knowingly made a false, material 

representation, with the intent to deceive the PTO. Id. It 

is not enough that the applicant “should have known” the 

statement was misleading. Id. at 1244. 

Here, Mr. Beling alleged that Ennis fraudulently represented that no other party had superior rights to the 

COLORWORX mark. In support, Mr. Beling points to 

webpage printouts and PTO records showing separate 

uses of either COLORWORKS, COLORWORX, or a crosshair design roughly similar to the features in Ennis’s 

stylized mark. Mr. Beling also relies on alleged inconsistencies in Ennis’s discovery responses as evidence of a 

fraudulent scheme. 

None of Mr. Beling’s evidence suggests that Ennis 

knew that a confusingly similar mark was already in use 

or that Ennis intended to deceive the PTO that such 

marks did not exist. At most, Mr. Beling’s evidence of 

third-party marks might suggest that Ennis should have 

known that they existed. But to prove fraudulent misrepresentation, a party must show actual knowledge, and 

Mr. Beling has failed to submit any evidence that tends to 

show Ennis actually knew the marks existed. To the 

contrary, Steven Osterloh, Ennis’s employee who signed 

the trademark application, stated in a deposition and an 

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BELING v. ENNIS, INC. 5

affidavit that he was unaware of any confusingly similar 

third-party uses at the time of the application. Further, 

any inconsistencies in Ennis’s discovery responses concerning the first use of Ennis’s mark in 2002 were attributable to differences in the questions being asked, and 

are not relevant to Ennis’s knowledge and intent at the 

time the application was filed in 2005. 

Because Mr. Beling did not produce evidence that Ennis actually knew of a confusingly similar third-party 

mark or intended to deceive the PTO, we affirm the 

Board’s grant of summary judgment on the fraudulent 

procurement claim. 

B 

The test for genericness is a two-step inquiry. First, 

we determine the genus of goods or services at issue. 

Second, we determine whether the mark in question is 

understood by the relevant public primarily to refer to 

that genus of goods or services. H. Marvin Ginn Corp. v. 

Int’l Ass’n of Fire Chiefs, Inc., 782 F.2d 987, 990 (Fed. Cir. 

1986). The genus at issue here is printing services. The 

genericness of COLORWORX therefore depends on 

whether the public would understand the mark to refer 

primarily to printing services. 

A mark is merely descriptive “if it immediately conveys knowledge of a quality, feature, function, or characteristic of the goods or services with which it is used.” In 

re Bayer Aktiengesellschaft, 488 F.3d 960, 963 (Fed. Cir. 

2007). Descriptiveness must be considered “in relation to 

the particular goods for which registration is sought, the 

context in which it is being used, and the possible significance that the term would have to the average purchaser 

of the goods [or services] because of the manner of its use 

or intended use.” Id. at 964. 

Here, Mr. Beling failed to submit any evidence that

the relevant public would understand Ennis’s stylized 

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6 BELING v. ENNIS, INC. 

COLORWORX mark or its literal component to be generic 

or merely descriptive. Mr. Beling submitted evidence of

third-party uses of a cross-hair design and the terms 

COLORWORKS and COLORWORX. But as the Board 

recognized, third-party uses of these marks are not probative of whether a consumer would recognize them to 

possess a meaning that is generic or merely descriptive of 

Ennis’s printing services. Indeed, some of these marks 

were registered on the principal register, suggesting that

the PTO considered these marks not to have generic or 

merely descriptive meaning. See 15 U.S.C. § 1052 (prohibiting registration on principal register of marks that do 

not distinguish the associated goods or services). 

Mr. Beling also submitted dictionary definitions for “color” 

and “works.” But Mr. Beling fails to submit any evidence 

of how the public understands those words when used 

together in a compound form. See Princeton Vanguard, 

LLC v. Frito-Lay N. Am., Inc., __ F.3d __, No. 14-1517, 

2015 WL 2337417, at *3 (Fed. Cir. May 15, 2015) (noting 

that to determine whether compound terms are generic, 

“the Board must consider the record evidence of the 

public’s understanding of the mark as a whole.”); DuoProSS Meditech Corp. v. Inviro Med. Devices, Ltd., 695 

F.3d 1247, 1252 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (“When determining 

whether a mark is merely descriptive, the Board must 

consider the commercial impression of the mark as a 

whole.”). 

Because Mr. Beling failed to produce evidence of how 

the relevant public would understand Ennis’s mark as a 

whole, we agree with the Board that Mr. Beling failed to 

create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether 

Ennis’s mark is generic or merely descriptive. Accordingly, we affirm the Board’s grant of summary judgment on 

these issues. 

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BELING v. ENNIS, INC. 7

III

We review the Board’s evidentiary rulings for abuse of 

discretion. Coach Servs., Inc. v. Triumph Learning LLC, 

668 F.3d 1356, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2012). Mr. Beling argues 

that the Board erroneously denied his motion to exclude 

some of Ennis’s evidence as an estoppel sanction for 

failure to produce that evidence in response to discovery 

requests. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(c)(1). As the Board 

found, however, the only evidence not publicly available 

was Steven Osterloh’s affidavit. Mr. Beling has not 

shown that Mr. Osterloh’s affidavit was materially inconsistent with Mr. Osterloh’s responses during his deposition. Accordingly, we conclude that the Board did not 

abuse its discretion in finding that Ennis did not rely on 

evidence that was improperly withheld from Mr. Beling. 

We therefore affirm the Board’s denial of Mr. Beling’s 

motion to exclude. 

IV

We have considered Mr. Beling’s remaining arguments and find them without merit. Accordingly, we 

affirm the Board’s grant of Ennis’s motion for summary 

judgment and dismissal of Mr. Beling’s cancellation claim

with prejudice. 

AFFIRMED

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