Unanswered admission requests can void a use-based registration
When a registration blocks an application and its owner stops participating, requests for admission aimed at use before the filing date can decide a cancellation on their own. Unanswered requests are deemed admitted and conclusively establish the matters they state; an admission that the mark was not in use when a §1(a) application was filed makes the registration void ab initio. The Board then has no need to reach fraud or likelihood of confusion. This non-precedential decision follows that pattern (at 18–20).
A defendant may decline to submit evidence or a brief at trial without penalty, and the petitioner still carries the burden of proof; only the failure to answer discovery produced consequences here (at 7–8). A §1(a) claim turns on use at the filing date. A §14(6) "never used" claim is available only after the registration is three years old and requires that the mark was never used at all, so alleging no use since registration states neither claim (at 10–15 & n.19). Exhibits attached to a pleading are not evidence (at 13 n.17). In the editors' view, the practical step is to plead the filing-date theory expressly and to draft admission requests that track it.
In the case, a cricket franchise's US subsidiary found its applications suspended over SUPERKING registrations owned by a Shenzhen company and filed in 2020 through counsel the USPTO later publicly reprimanded (slip op. at 5–6 & n.13). The registrant answered, then stopped responding to its own lawyer and to discovery (at 7). Both registrations were cancelled on §1(a) nonuse (at 20–21).