Two of the most-watched trademark cases in the country are pending in Ohio right now, and nearly every account of them is a story about cartoon animals. While that framing may be understandable, it is also the least useful way for a brand owner to read them.
Instead, read the complaints. What emerges is a company that spent years assembling trademark registrations reaching past its primary logo, and that company is now using those registrations to define the outer edge of infringement. The beavers are the media headline; however, the portfolio is the instructive story and is the part that translates to companies whose marks will never appear on a highway billboard.
The Two Ohio Cases
Everyone in Ohio has heard or seen that Buc-ee’s has arrived with plans to keep growing, and thanks to John Oliver, most Americans now know they brought their attorneys with them.
Buc-ee’s, Ltd. (Buc-ee’s) sued Coles IP Holdings, LLC, the entity behind the northern Ohio convenience chain now branded Mickey’s, on February 18, 2026. Five months later, on July 28, 2026, it filed a second Ohio action against Hanes Road Carryout, Inc., which operates Beaver’s Mini Mart in Beavercreek.
The Coles complaint pleads three counts: (i) federal trademark infringement under Section 32 of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1114; (ii) federal unfair competition under Section 43(a), 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a); and (iii) cancellation of the defendant’s own registrations under 15 U.S.C. § 1119 and 28 USC § 2201. Buc-ee’s bundles the asserted rights into a defined group, the “Buc-ee’s Marks,” consisting of the word mark BUC-EE’S together with logos the pleading describes as featuring a cartoon animal facing right, wide-eyed and smiling, over a round background.
However, the definition of “Buc-ee’s Marks” is doing the real work and showing the strength of their portfolio. By describing its rights at the level of structural features rather than a single drawing, Buc-ee’s strongly positioned itself to argue that a moose in a red hexagon shares a commercial impression with a beaver in a yellow circle.
The Word Mark Nobody Was Looking At
While the complaint against Mickey’s marks Buc-ee’s first legal debut in Ohio, the recently filed complaint against Beaver’s Mini Mart in Beavercreek shows the true value of a comprehensive portfolio.
The Hanes Road complaint asserts marks, including the word mark BEAVER’S, Reg. No. 6,059,078, which covers retail store services featuring convenience store items and gasoline. Because of this, the dispute looks different.
But, why would a company called Buc-ee’s register BEAVER’S at all? Purportedly, because its founder, co-owner, and CEO has gone by the nickname “Beaver” since childhood. That supplies an obvious reason to want the word in the portfolio, and an equally obvious reason it never became the name over the door.
Which creates the problem every owner of a secondary mark eventually faces—registration requires bona fide use in the ordinary course of trade, not use manufactured to reserve rights. A company operating under one name while maintaining registrations for another has to find genuine commercial use for the second mark, which is presumably why BEAVER’S turns up on in-store signage and fuel branding rather than on the building. Companies consolidating portfolios after an acquisition or retiring a legacy name they are unwilling to abandon, confront the same problem.
What Registration Does, and What It Does Not Do
The Sixth Circuit weighs likelihood of confusion under the eight factors set out in Frisch’s Restaurants, Inc. v. Elby’s Big Boy of Steubenville, Inc., and restated in Frisch’s Restaurant, Inc. v. Shoney’s Inc.: (i) strength of the plaintiff’s mark; (ii) relatedness of the goods or services; (iii) similarity of the marks; (iv) evidence of actual confusion; (v) marketing channels; (vi) likely degree of purchaser care; (vii) the defendant’s intent; and (viii) the likelihood of product line expansion. No single factor controls, and the weighting shifts with the record.
Registration with the USPTO moves several of those factors, and it moves the procedure around them. A registration is prima facie evidence of validity, ownership, and the exclusive right to use. The application filing date operates as constructive use, conferring priority nationwide as of that date. Incontestability converts the registration into conclusive evidence of the right to use, subject to enumerated defenses.
However, none of that decides similarity or confusion, which is where the dispute concerning the word mark BUC-EE’S with the logo lies. A case about whether two cartoon animals look alike is a hard case. A case about whether a convenience store may operate under the name BEAVER’S when someone else holds a registration for BEAVER’S covering convenience store services is a far more conventional one.
Anyone else’s use prior to a registrant’s filing date is expressly excepted from constructive use priority. A local business operating under its name before that date keeps whatever common law rights it built in its trading area. Where the parties’ territories do not overlap, Dawn Donut Co. v. Hart’s Food Stores, Inc., and the cases following it may further limit injunctive relief until the registrant enters the market. Whatever the evidence in Beavercreek turns out to show, the defense will likely rely upon these provisions.
One omission deserves attention, however. The Coles complaint pleads infringement, unfair competition, and cancellation, but it does not plead dilution, despite alleging at length that the marks are iconic. Fame is a demanding legal standard, measured by recognition among the general consuming public, and declining to plead it reads as a considered judgment rather than an oversight.
The Registry Track Runs First
Buried in the Coles complaint is a detail worth more than its two lines. Buc-ee’s petitioned to cancel the defendant’s registrations before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board on August 11, 2025, a few months before it filed suit. The complaint then asks the district court to exercise its own authority to cancel those registrations and refuse the defendant’s pending application.
An opposition or a cancellation costs a fraction of litigation while both build a record put a competitor’s registration at risk without a federal complaint or the attention one attracts. But the Board is not the earliest point of intervention available, and it is not the cheapest.
The Letter Before the Lawsuit
The Beavercreek complaint did not arrive out of nowhere. Per Buc-ee’s own press release, Buc-ee’s learned of the Beavercreek store in October 2025 when an Ohio trade name registration was filed, then sent correspondence to Beavers Mini Mart owner, Mr. Vikramjit Singh Bopari, in March, again in April, and attempted delivery in person in June before filing suit at the end of July. Nine months elapsed between discovery and complaint.
That is the ordinary shape of a functioning enforcement program. A notice flags a potential filing. Counsel evaluates the conflict against the portfolio. A letter goes out. In the large majority of matters, that is the end of it: the mark is phased out, a coexistence or understanding is reached, or the recipient explains something that persuades the sender to stand down. The disputes that reach a docket are not a representative sample of a brand’s enforcement work.
So, it is worth asking why these notices still led to litigation. The Beavercreek store owner has said publicly that he filed the Ohio trade name at his bank’s request, so the business could keep depositing card payments under its own name, and that the sign had been in place for years.
The practical lesson is that the notice is not the deliverable—what is the deliverable is the response. The drafting choices that feel cosmetic are not: whether the letter opens with a demand or an explanation, whether it is addressed to a company or to a person, whether it arrives by a channel the recipient actually opens, whether it offers a path such as a phase-out period, a geographic carve-out, or a limited coexistence or a menu of things to stop doing, and whether escalation is calibrated to the recipient.
What Buc-ee’s appears to have wanted here makes the point. The mayor of Huber Heights has reported that the company’s founder told him Buc-ee’s had no objection to a beaver in Beavercreek and would resolve the matter if the mark were not expanded, its concern being replication across the region rather than one storefront. If that is the actual objective, it is precisely the kind of thing a letter can propose and a complaint cannot. The complaint on file asks the court to order signage destroyed.
For the business receiving the letter, the calculus is the mirror image. That envelope is the cheapest moment the dispute will ever have. It is the point at which counsel can weigh priority under the Frisch’s factors, confirm whether the sender’s registrations cover the services at issue, and probe whether the sender wants a rebrand or a boundary. All those costs less than an answer, and none of it is available once fee-shifting exposure and a public docket are in the picture. Silence is the one response that forecloses every option.
Two Readings, Both Correct
For brand owners, the lesson is that the reach of an enforcement program is set long before anyone drafts a demand letter. Registrations covering the word, the design, the secondary name, and the merchandise categories generate arguments. Buc-ee’s obtained registrations across multiple classes, separate registrations for its logo and its stylized word mark covering the core retail services. This extensive portfolio is why Buc-ee’s can enforce its marks with regularity.
For a business on the receiving end of a demand, the same record cuts differently. A broad portfolio establishes what is registered. It does not establish that a moose resembles a beaver, that a customer walking into a two-thousand-square-foot store without fuel pumps believes she has entered a travel center, or that priority runs against a local operator who was there first. Registration is where the Frisch’s analysis starts not ends.
Both readings can be true at once, which is why these cases are worth watching. Whatever the outcomes, the decisions that shaped them were made in the prosecution files and early persistent notices, before anyone walked into a courthouse.
Contact
To discuss further, contact KJK attorneys Antonio Dempsey (AFD@kjk.com) or Kyle Stroup (KDS@kjk.com).