Trademark abandonment is emerging as a critical pressure point in a number of new branding disputes. As companies rebrand and revive legacy branding in a crowded market, courts are being asked to resolve disputes that no longer center solely on claims of copying or consumer confusion. Instead, these cases turn on a more fundamental question: whether a trademark has truly been abandoned or has continued to function as an indicator of source in the market despite changes in form, prominence, or strategy.
A wave of newly filed cases reflects not a change in doctrine, but the application of settled principles to evolving commercial realities. While the sale of goods remains the clearest and most straightforward way to show use of a trademark, courts are increasingly being confronted with use questions arising from how brands are monetized, maintained, and experienced outside of newly manufactured products or services. Against that background, trademark use may be demonstrated through domain names, licensing arrangements, certification services, after-market activity, and authorized resale programs, provided that the activity is bona fide, commercial, and source-identifying.
Reframing “Use” in Modern Disputes
Within this framework, courts generally do not treat rebranding as a clean break for purposes of abandonment analysis. A company may de-emphasize a name, reposition its identity, or introduce a new flagship brand without necessarily relinquishing rights in an existing mark. This principle is driving the key arguments advanced by X Corp., which has pushed back against claims that its rebrand from Twitter to “X” has left the TWITTER name up for grabs.
In the lawsuit that it lodged against Operation Bluebird in federal court in Delaware in December 2025, X argues that its adoption of the X name does not come at the expense of its rights in the TWITTER mark. Instead, the social media company maintains that TWITTER has remained in continuous, source-identifying use through ongoing domain use, persistent consumer vernacular, display of the mark on consumer-facing webpages, licensing arrangements with third parties, and active enforcement of its trademark portfolio.
X contends that these forms of use show that the TWITTER name has retained commercial significance and goodwill despite the platform’s broader rebranding. The relevant question, X argues, is not whether TWITTER remains the company’s primary brand, but whether the mark continues to function as a source identifier in the marketplace.
A separate but related set of abandonment issues is playing out in a case involving Nike and its TOTAL 90 brand. In that case, which was filed in a Louisiana federal court in November 2025, Total90 LLC alleges that Nike forfeited its rights in the TOTAL 90 name when it allowed a U.S. federal registration for the mark to lapse, only to reenter the market years later with a high-profile relaunch of the iconic soccer line.
Nike responded to its smaller competitor’s case by arguing that it never stopped using the mark, and the court has already declined to grant emergency injunctive relief to Total90, emphasizing that trademark rights are established and maintained through use of the mark, and that a lapse in registration, without more, does not establish abandonment.
Legacy Marks, Residual Goodwill & the Abandonment Question
Legacy branding further complicates the abandonment equation. Courts appear to be receptive to the idea that goodwill does not evaporate just because a product stops appearing on shelves, particularly when there is evidence that a mark continues to function as an indicator of source for consumers. Consumer association can endure for years, and in some cases decades, especially when a mark remains culturally resonant or commercially relevant in adjacent contexts in a manner that reinforces that source-identifying function. And in those cases, it can be more difficult to establish abandonment as a matter of fact.
In that context, after-market and resale activity plays a significant role in abandonment disputes. Authorized resale, restoration services, spare parts sales, and certification programs, for instance, can serve as evidence of ongoing commercial use where they are authorized by the trademark owner and reinforce source identification, even after sales of new products have ceased.
The General Court of the European Union endorsed this in a case involving Ferrari, holding in a July 2025 decision that authorized second-hand sales and certification services tied to Ferrari’s Testarossa model were sufficient to preserve trademark rights for the Italian automaker decades after it stopped making new Testarossa cars. While the impact is limited to EU law, the decision reflects a judicial willingness to credit structured after-market activity as meaningful trademark use.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: Brand transitions – whether through rebrands, revivals, or strategic pivots – have emerged as natural flashpoints within the evolving abandonment landscape. Across these disputes, courts are applying traditional abandonment doctrine by focusing less on shifts in branding strategy, production, or periods of dormancy, and more on whether the evidentiary record shows continued, source-identifying commercial use with sustained commercial significance over time.
The state of play when it comes to abandonment has direct consequences for brand owners. As courts place greater weight on evidence of continued, source-identifying use over formal markers like rebranding decisions or periods of dormancy, the stakes for trademark portfolio management have risen accordingly. Maintaining rights requires more than periodic filings or defensive registrations; it demands deliberate, ongoing decisions about how marks are used, where they appear, and how legacy assets are integrated into contemporary business models.
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