ABSTRACT
This paper tests a practical hypothesis: in contemporary trademark practice, well-resourced firms sometimes deploy enforcement not only to mitigate consumer confusion, but also to raise rivals’ costs and deter adjacent-market entry, especially when the target is smaller and resource-constrained. US trademark law facilitates this strategy because the core infringement inquiry, likelihood of confusion under the Lanham Act, is deliberately multi-factor and fact-intensive across circuits, making outcomes uncertain and litigation costs high even when the underlying market overlap is marginal. In that environment, disputes are frequently resolved through cease-and-desist pressure, delay, and asymmetric bargaining power rather than merits adjudication, a pattern extensively discussed in scholarship and in the USPTO’s study of trademark litigation tactics and ‘bullying’. Yet the same legal architecture provides smaller firms with meaningful, lower-cost defensive tools, doctrinal limits (eg, classic fair use), and procedural avenues, such as TTAB opposition/cancellation, that can preserve brand equity without conceding the field to overbroad claims of exclusivity. Using US trademark doctrine, TTAB procedure, the ‘trademark bullying’ literature, and an illustrative TTAB cancellation fact pattern, this paper argues that disciplined investment in trademark clearance, registration, and defense is rational even under cost asymmetry, because trademarks operationalize legally cognizable goodwill and reduce consumer search costs, often functioning as a firm’s principal channel to market access and competitive differentiation.
Singh, Parth and Palem, Chaitanya, When Big Brands ‘Bulldoze’ Small Marks: Analysis of US Trademark Law (December 23, 2025).
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