Trick, No Treat: How a Halloween Brand Lost Its Own Trademark Fight

Proof Of A Trademark

A recent decision shows how important it is for practitioners filing UDRP claim to make sure that their proofs are in order. This applies not only to proof of the substantial issues in the case,  but also to proof of formal matters. The formal matters are important as they may show or fail to show that the panel has jurisdiction to hear the claim under the UDRP.

The case is Trick or Treat Studios, LLC v. kayleighs kayleighs

(FORUM Case: 24  June 2026).

The Complainant was engaged in the manufacture and sale of Halloween costumes, masks, toys, action figures, and other horror-genre and pop culture-themed goods. It had a website at https://trickortreatstudios.com/ where you can see the sort of goods it was selling.

The domain name being sought by the Complainant as <trickortreatstudiosshop.shop>. The Respondent had used it for a website that copied images from Complainant's website and advertised the same sort of goods for sale as the Complainant.

The Complainant claimed that it had a trademark in TRICK OR TREAT STUDIOS, not surprisingly in view of the wording of the domain name.

But obviously, it had to prove the trademark and its rights in it, the very basis of a panel’s jurisdiction under the UDRP. So it claimed that it had a registered trademark  in TRICK OR TREAT STUDIOS. It claimed that it held this trademark through its “affiliate intellectual property holding company TTS IP Holdings, LLC.”

The general rule on proving trademarks is that the trademark must be in the name of the Complainant itself, or that the owner of the trademark had given an exclusive licence to the Complainant to use it.

Trouble was , first, that the trademark was not registered in the name of the Complainant. It was registered in the name of TTS IP Holdings, LLC, the company the Complainant had described as its “affiliate intellectual property holding company”.

But there was no evidence that TTS IP Holdings, LLC. had given the Complainant an exclusive licence to use the trademark.

Consequently, the Complaint failed in that regard because the UDRP provides that the Complainant must have “rights” in the trademark, and it has “rights” only if it is the owner of the trademark or was exclusively authorized by it to use the trademark. The Complainant had shown neither.

How about common law trademark rights? Wouldn’t this give the Complainant “rights” in the trademark, enabling it to bring the claim? Yes, it would, on appropriate evidence, but the Complainant had not provided that evidence. It certainly claimed common law rights in TRICK OR TREAT STUDIOS and that it had used it for several years, but its only evidence of this was “a webpage showing the image of a 30" leprechaun doll, currently not available for purchase”. So there was no adequate evidence that TRICK OR TREAT STUDIOS was the mark that it used in its trade and business.

Common law trademark rights can often be proved, and it is done by evidence of extensive use of the trademark that is claimed. Thus, evidence of sales, media write- ups, advertisements and recognition of the trademark’s fame or renown will usually be accepted by a panel as being adequate. But it is taking a risk to hope that merely asserting a common law trademark and tendering scant evidence of it, as in this case, will be enough, because it will not be enough.

Proving a trademark is a formal matter, but important, and so important that a claim for a domain name can fail if the trademark is not proved.

And the trademark had not been proved in this case. The registered trademark had not been proved for the reasons given above. The common law trademark had not been proved because of the lack of evidence that it had been known of and accepted as being the mark of the Complainant’s business.

Again, proof these albeit formal matters, is just as important as proof of the substantial issues that arise in the case.