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Page Number: 13

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

Opinion of the Court 

the  way  Congress  described,  with  no  need  for  any  actual
confusion.  Under step two of our extraterritoriality stand-
ard, then, “use in commerce” provides the dividing line be-
tween foreign and domestic applications of these Lanham 
Act provisions. 

III 
Resisting  this  straightforward  application  of  our  prece-
dent,  JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR  concludes  that  step  two  of  our
extraterritoriality framework turns solely on whether “the 
object  of  the  statute’s  focus  is  found  in,  or  occurs  in,  the
United States.”  Post, at 5 (opinion concurring in judgment). 
Applied  to  the  Lanham  Act,  the  upshot  of  this  focus-only
standard  is  that  any  claim  involving  a  likelihood  of  con-
sumer confusion in the United States would be a “domestic” 
application of the Act.  This approach is wrong, and it would
give the Lanham Act an untenably broad reach that under-
mines our extraterritoriality framework. 

A 
To  justify  looking  only  to  a  provision’s  “focus,”  JUSTICE 
SOTOMAYOR  maintains  that  “an  application  of  a  statute”
can still be domestic “when foreign conduct is implicated.” 
Post, at 7.  If this assertion simply means that a permissible
domestic application can occur even when some foreign “ac-
tivity is involved in the case,” Morrison, 561 U. S., at 266, 
then it is true but misses the point.  When a claim involves 
both domestic and foreign activity, the question is whether 
“ ‘the conduct relevant to the statute’s focus occurred in the 
United States.’ ”  Nestlé, 593 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 3– 
4).  If that “ ‘conduct . . . occurred in the United States, then 
the case involves a permissible domestic application’ of the 
statute ‘even if other conduct occurred abroad.’ ”  Western-
Geco, 585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6).  But “if the conduct 
relevant to the focus occurred in a foreign country, then the 
case involves an impermissible extraterritorial application