B&B Hardware v. Hargis Indus.

In B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Indus., 575 U.S. 138, 160 (2015), the U.S. Supreme Court held in a trademark case that:

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So long as the other ordinary elements of issue preclusion are met, when the usages adjudicated by the TTAB are materially the same as those before the district court, issue preclusion should apply.

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Justice Thomas dissented, as joined by Justice Scalia:

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The Court today applies a presumption that when Congress enacts statutes authorizing administrative agencies to resolve disputes in an adjudicatory setting, it intends those agency decisions to have preclusive effect in Article III courts. That presumption was first announced in poorly supported dictum in a 1991 decision of this Court, and we have not applied it since. Whatever the validity of that presumption with respect to statutes enacted after its creation, there is no justification for applying it to the Lanham Act, passed in 1946. Seeing no other reason to conclude that Congress implicitly authorized the decisions of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) to have preclusive effect in a subsequent trademark infringement suit, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.

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B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Indus., 575 U.S. 138, 161, 135 S. Ct. 1293, 1310-11 (2015) (Thomas and Scalia, JJ., dissenting).