Raxton Corporation, D/B/A Off the Rax v. Anania Associates, Inc., D/B/A Off the Rack

COFFIN, Chief Judge.

This appeal concerns the geographic scope of trademark protection accorded to a plaintiff in the absence of state or federal trademark registration. At issue is the vitality and dimension of the doctrine of the “zone of natural business expansion.” 1 That doctrine is said to grant the owner of a trademark the right to obtain legal relief against a geographically distant party that subsequently adopts a confusingly similar mark, so long as the first user can show that the distant location is within its “natural zone of expansion”. We reverse the judgment below and hold that…