Court Opinion

ID: 9493351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:05:50.482792+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:47.778817
License: Public Domain

*1367MAYER, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
Because I believe the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board properly dismissed the petition because of claim preclusion, I respectfully dissent.
By inquiring into the transactional facts of a case, we determine whether or not claim preclusion applies. See Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24 (1982) (all actions arising from the same transaction or series of transactions constitute a single claim for purposes of claim preclusion). Under the principle of claim preclusion, “a party must raise in a single lawsuit all the grounds of recovery arising from a single transaction or series of transactions that can be brought together.” Mars Inc. v. Nippon Conlux Kabushiki-Kaisha, 58 F.3d 616, 619, 35 USPQ2d 1311, 1314 (Fed.Cir.1995).
Policy concerns about conserving judicial resources and preventing multiplicity of suits demand that a generous view of the rule against splitting claims be taken. “It is a misconception‘of res judicata to assume that the doctrine does not come into operation if a court has not passed on the ‘merits’ in the sense of the ultimate substantive issues of a litigation.” Angel v. Bullington, 330 U.S. 183, 190, 67 S.Ct. 657, 91 L.Ed. 832 (1947). Therefore, the district court’s failure to reach cancellation substantively does not prevent the application of claim preclusion. See Bio-Technology Gen. Corp. v. Genentech, Inc., 80 F.3d 1553, 1563, 38 USPQ2d 1321, 1328 (Fed.Cir.1996) (in patent cases, only the jurisdictional limitations on the relief available in the International Trade Commission prevented its decisions from having res judicata effect).
“In its simplest construct, res judicata precludes the relitigation of a claim, or cause of action, or any possible defense to the cause of action which is ended by a judgment of the court.” Foster v. Hallco Mfg. Co., Inc., 947 F.2d 469, 476, 20 USPQ2d 1241, 1246 (Fed.Cir.1991). Mars addressed claim preclusion by inquiring into the transactional facts surrounding the relationship between a parent corporation and its subsidiary, and held that the relationship was so close that barring Mars from suing the parent corporation after gaining a final judgment against the subsidiary was justified. See 58 F.3d at 619, 35 USPQ2d at 1314. The same logic applies here. Because Jet’s cancellation claim was based on the same transactional facts as its infringement claim and was brought under a similar theory of confusion against the same defendant in the infringement suit, the two causes of action were close enough to require that they be brought together in the same forum.
When the district court denied Jet’s motion to amend its complaint to add a claim for cancellation of the AEROB-A-JET mark, alleging that SAS’s use of its mark was likely to cause confusion with the JET and JET AERATION marks, Jet was precluded from seeking cancellation in another forum.