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ABITRON AUSTRIA GMBH v. HETRONIC INT’L, INC. 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in judgment 

States.  See id., at 281, 286–287.  Because the Court decided 
Steele 70 years ago, it had no occasion to apply the two-step
framework that the Court has since developed for evaluat-
ing the extraterritorial reach of a statute.  A proper appli-
cation  of  that  framework,  however,  leads  to  a  result  con-
sistent  with  Steele:  Although  there  is  no  clear  indication
that the Lanham Act provisions at issue rebut the presump-
tion against extraterritoriality at step one, a domestic ap-
plication of the statute can implicate foreign conduct at step 
two, so long as the plaintiff proves a likelihood of consumer 
confusion domestically. 

A 
In Steele, the Bulova Watch Company, Inc., a New York 
corporation  that  marketed  watches  under  the  registered 
U. S. mark “Bulova,” sued Sidney Steele, a U. S. citizen and 
resident of Texas with a watch business in Mexico City.  Id., 
at 281, 284.  Upon discovering that the mark “Bulova” was
not registered in Mexico, Steele obtained the Mexican reg-
istration of the mark, assembled watches in Mexico using
component  parts  he  had  procured  from  the  United  States
and  Switzerland,  and  “stamped  his  watches  with  ‘Bulova’ 
and sold them as such.”  Id., at 281, 284–285.  As a result, 
“spurious  ‘Bulovas’  filtered  through  the  Mexican  border
into this country,” causing a Bulova Watch Company’s sales 
representative in the United States to “receiv[e] numerous
complaints from retail jewelers in the Mexican border area
[of Texas] whose customers brought in for repair defective
‘Bulovas’ which upon inspection often turned out not to be
products of that company.”  Id., at 285–286.  Steele “com-
mitted no illegal acts within the United States.”  Id., at 282. 
The  Court  held  that,  because  Steele’s  “operations  and 
their effects were not confined within the territorial limits 
of a foreign nation,” the Lanham Act applied to Steele’s ac-
tivities.  Id.,  at  286.  The  Court  emphasized  that  Steele’s 
conduct  had  the  potential  to  “reflect  adversely  on  Bulova