892 F.3d 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2018)
On behalf of Royal Crown Company, Inc. and Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. (together, “RC”), the Firm prevailed at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals after a nearly decade-long battle concerning whether The Coca-Cola Company (“TCCC”) could claim exclusive trademark rights to ZERO for soft drinks. The Federal Circuit vacated the decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”), finding, among other things, that the TTAB had applied the wrong legal standard to the question of whether ZERO is generic, had failed properly to assess the degree of the term’s descriptiveness, and had incorrectly weighed evidence, including by improperly discounting RC’s evidence of third-party use of ZERO. The Federal Circuit remanded the case to the TTAB for further proceedings.