Lawfare and Corporate Espionage in the Gage TTAB Proceedings: A Tactical Analysis

A forensic tactical analysis of lawfare, discovery tactics, domain warfare, admissions under oath, and institutional interconnection across six years of coordinated opposition in the Gage TTAB proceedings.

LAW Intelligence Research Division · LAW Intelligence 2(6) · 2026

Lawfare and Corporate Espionage in the Gage TTAB Proceedings: A Tactical Analysis

Abstract

The two TTAB proceedings concerning the Gage trademark — Cancellation No. 91252169 and Opposition No. 91278331 — represent not merely a priority dispute over a cannabis brand name but a case study in asymmetric litigation tactics. This paper presents a factual, evidence-based tactical analysis of the litigation conduct, discovery maneuvers, procedural behavior, and legal infrastructure deployed across both proceedings. Drawing on the internal trial record, documentary evidence, and the public TTAB docket, the analysis documents patterns of behavior by the corporate actors and their counsel — including Dentons LLP and Saul Ewing LLP — without making legal claims or conclusions. The paper is organized by procedural phase: pre-filing positioning, discovery conduct, motion practice, evidentiary submissions, settlement signaling, and default/post-default maneuvering. Each section presents what the record shows, leaving the characterization of that conduct to the reader and to the appropriate legal authorities.

Introduction

Trademark Trial and Appeal Board proceedings are administrative adjudications within the United States Patent and Trademark Office. They are designed to be more accessible, more efficient, and less formal than federal district court litigation. A pro se party is expected to be able to participate meaningfully without the resources of a law firm.

The Gage TTAB proceedings departed from that expectation. Across two matters — Cancellation No. 91252169 (decided) and Opposition No. 91278331 (active, respondent in default) — the original Gage brand holder, proceeding substantially pro se, faced coordinated legal representation from multiple large law firms retained by the corporate actors in the Gage trademark acquisition chain. This paper documents the tactical dimensions of that asymmetry.

I. Procedural History

A. Cancellation No. 91252169

Cancellation No. 91252169 was filed seeking cancellation of Gage Growth Corp.'s trademark registration. The proceeding resulted in a 130+ page decision dated April 29, 2025, with the TTAB entering judgment on September 30, 2025.

The TTAB's decision included findings favorable to the original brand holder on the issues of ownership and distinctiveness — recognizing the brand's established presence in Michigan cannabis commerce. However, the Board entered an adverse result on the question of priority, tied to the evidentiary record available at the time.

The procedural history of Cancellation No. 91252169 — the motion practice, the discovery exchanges, the evidentiary submissions, and the timing of key filings — provides the factual foundation for the tactical analysis that follows.

B. Opposition No. 91278331

Opposition No. 91278331 is the active proceeding before the TTAB, filed by Gage Prestige Holdings LLC against Gage Growth Corp.'s trademark claims. On March 3, 2026, the TTAB issued a Show Cause Order directing Gage Growth Corp. to show cause why the opposition should not be sustained in light of its failure to respond or otherwise defend. The deadline for response was April 2, 2026.

As of the date of this paper, Gage Growth Corp. has defaulted. Under TTAB practice, a default by the respondent in an opposition proceeding may result in judgment being entered against the respondent, sustaining the opposition and refusing registration.

II. Legal Infrastructure and Resource Asymmetry

A. Law Firm Involvement — The Corporate Side

The corporate actors in the Gage trademark acquisition chain deployed substantial legal resources across both TTAB proceedings.

Dentons LLP. Dentons — the world's largest law firm by attorney headcount, with approximately 12,000 lawyers across 80+ countries — served as Gage Growth Corp.'s counsel in Cancellation No. 91252169. The firm's connection to the Gage matter runs through multiple channels. Lynn Gefen, TerrAscend's Chief Legal Officer, was previously associated with Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP, which subsequently merged into Dentons. The firm's representation of Gage Growth placed the resources of a global law firm against the original brand holder, who proceeded pro se through substantial portions of the proceeding.

Saul Ewing LLP. Saul Ewing — a national law firm with over 400 attorneys across multiple offices — also appears in connection with the TTAB proceedings and the corporate actors involved in the Gage trademark acquisition chain. The firm's involvement in a trademark opposition before an administrative board, where the opposing party was an individual proceeding without counsel, is itself a tactical datum.

B. Pro Se Support — Rexford Brabson and T-Rex Law

Against the global-firm resources deployed by the corporate actors, the original brand holder received formal legal support from a single source: Rexford Brabson of T-Rex Law.

Brabson is a respected TTAB practitioner whose career as a trademark specialist before the Board began in substantial part with the Gage proceedings. He reached out after observing the original brand holder — representing his own company, filing pro se before the TTAB — and offered limited-scope, a la carte assistance: preparing select filings, reviewing procedural requirements, and teaching the holder to read and apply the TTAB's rules of practice. Brabson introduced the holder to fiduciary discipline — the understanding that representing one's own company before the Board carries obligations beyond those of an ordinary litigant.

Brabson's support was not pro bono in the institutional sense. He was retained for specific filings on a limited-scope basis. But his willingness to work with a pro se party — to provide a la carte services rather than demanding full-representation retainers of the kind that corporate counsel command — itself reflects a professional commitment to access to justice within the trademark system. He was, in the holder's account, likely the only lawyer who meaningfully helped.

The contrast is structural: on one side, Dentons (12,000 lawyers) and Saul Ewing (400+ lawyers), retained by publicly traded corporations with access to capital markets; on the other, a solo practitioner providing limited-scope services to an individual litigant. The resource asymmetry documented in the remainder of this section must be understood against this baseline: the original brand holder had one attorney, retained a la carte, against the coordinated resources of multiple global and national law firms.

C. TTAB Proceeding Duration — The Gage Proceedings as Extreme Outlier

Brabson has observed — casually, as a matter of professional experience — that the Gage TTAB proceedings may be among the longest he has encountered. The factual record supports this assessment.

Typical TTAB duration. The average fully litigated TTAB opposition or cancellation proceeding resolves within approximately two to three years from filing to final decision. The USPTO's reported pendency for inter partes cases before the Board is approximately 150 to 180 weeks (roughly three to three and a half years) from commencement to decision. Many proceedings — a substantial majority — settle, are decided on summary judgment, or are otherwise resolved within twelve to eighteen months. Proceedings extending beyond four years are uncommon. Proceedings extending beyond five years are rare outliers.

The Gage proceedings. Cancellation No. 91252169 spanned approximately six years from filing to the TTAB's final decision, with judgment entered on September 30, 2025. Opposition No. 91278331 remains active, with the respondent in default as of April 2026. When the two proceedings are measured together — from the filing of the first to the present — the combined pendency approaches seven years.

At nearly three times the typical TTAB duration, the Gage proceedings occupy a statistical extreme in Board practice. The duration is not itself a finding of misconduct — complex cases take longer, and pro se parties may require accommodations that extend timelines. But the duration is a factual datum, and it bears on the tactical analysis that follows: a proceeding that stretches across six or seven years imposes cumulative burdens on the individual litigant — financial, temporal, and psychological — that compound with each additional year of pendency. The corporate actors, with institutional resources and law-firm representation, are structurally better positioned to absorb extended litigation timelines.

D. The Resource Differential

The resource asymmetry between the parties is documented in the procedural record:

• Counsel of record: In Cancellation No. 91252169, the corporate respondent was represented by a team of attorneys from a global law firm. The petitioner proceeded substantially pro se, engaging counsel for specific phases only.
• Filings and motions: The volume, length, and procedural complexity of filings from the represented party reflected the resources of firm-based litigation teams — multiple attorneys, paralegals, and support staff — while the pro se party's filings reflected individual preparation.
• Discovery burden: Discovery requests served by the represented party imposed document production, interrogatory response, and deposition preparation obligations on an individual litigant without the infrastructure that a law firm provides to its clients.

The resource differential is not itself improper. But it establishes the context in which all other tactical conduct occurred: an individual brand holder, whose mark had been appropriated through a corporate acquisition chain, facing the coordinated legal resources of the entities that appropriated it.

III. Discovery Conduct: Volume, Timing, and Asymmetry

The discovery phase of Cancellation No. 91252169 is where the resource asymmetry between the parties translated most directly into tactical advantage. What follows is a documented account of the discovery requests served, the timing of discovery events, and the structural asymmetry in the parties' respective discovery burdens.

A. Discovery Volume — Exceeding the TTAB Limit

Under the TTAB's Standard Protective Order and the applicable rules of practice, each party in an inter partes proceeding is limited to 75 document requests. This limit is a structural safeguard — it ensures that discovery remains proportional and that pro se parties are not buried under a volume of requests that only a law firm could handle.

The Dentons discovery package. Dentons LLP, representing Gage Growth Corp., served a combined discovery package on the pro se petitioner that exceeded the TTAB's limit by a substantial margin. The package comprised:

• 18 interrogatories — written questions requiring sworn responses, each with subparts that multiplied the effective burden
• 12 requests for admission (RFAs) — each designed to narrow the factual record and establish foundation for summary judgment
• 12 requests for production of documents (RFPs) — each seeking broad categories of business records, communications, and financial data spanning years of brand activity

The combined total — 42 discovery items — does not, on its face, exceed the TTAB's limit of 75 document requests. But the requests were supplemented, expanded, and re-served through deficiency letters, follow-up requests, and motions to compel. When the full discovery record is tallied — including amended requests, supplemental interrogatories, and document demands embedded in correspondence — the total served on the pro se petitioner reached approximately 116 discovery requests, exceeding the TTAB limit of 75 by approximately 55 percent.

The Westbrook correction. There is a telling detail in the correspondence. One of the corporate respondent's attorneys corrected an earlier Dentons assertion about the discovery limit: "The limit is 75 document REQUESTS, not 75 documents." The clarification was correct as a matter of TTAB procedure — but it was made in the context of justifying discovery demands that, in the aggregate, exceeded the limit the rule was designed to enforce. The correction, while technically accurate, did not alter the fact that the petitioner faced a volume of discovery that exceeded what the rules contemplate for a single party.

The sequencing strategy. The discovery was not served all at once. It was sequenced in phases designed to build a record progressively and to impose cumulative response burdens:

1. Phase 1 — Requests for Admission (RFAs). Served first, the RFAs sought to lock the petitioner into factual positions before discovery had been exchanged — a tactic that, in federal litigation, is typically employed after document production has given both sides a basis for assessing what facts can reasonably be admitted or denied.
2. Phase 2 — Interrogatories. The 18 interrogatories, served after the RFAs, sought detailed narrative responses on topics including brand origin, genetic lineage, commercial use, and business relationships — each answer a potential admission that could be used to constrain the petitioner's case at trial.
3. Phase 3 — Document Requests. The RFPs sought broad categories of documents — cultivation records, financial statements, communications, marketing materials — spanning years of brand activity. For an individual litigant without a document management infrastructure, locating, reviewing, and producing these materials required hundreds of hours of personal effort.
4. Phase 4 — Depositions. With written discovery complete, the corporate respondent noticed depositions — placing the pro se petitioner under oath, on the record, facing examination by experienced litigation attorneys.
5. Phase 5 — Subpoenas. Third-party subpoenas were issued to entities and individuals connected to the petitioner, expanding the discovery burden beyond the parties to the proceeding.

Each phase built on the prior one. Admissions narrowed the factual record. Interrogatories locked in narrative positions. Document requests tested those positions against the written record. Depositions tested them under oath. Subpoenas expanded the inquiry beyond the parties' control. The sequence, viewed objectively, was a structured litigation campaign — the kind of phased discovery strategy that a well-resourced law firm deploys against a represented adversary, not the kind of discovery that the TTAB's rules contemplate for an administrative proceeding involving a pro se party.

B. Discovery Delay — Six Extensions, 360 Days

The TTAB's rules permit extensions of discovery deadlines for good cause. The corporate respondent's counsel sought and obtained six 60-day extensions during Cancellation No. 91252169 — a total of 360 days of additional discovery time, effectively a full calendar year of delay beyond the standard discovery schedule.

Each extension served the corporate respondent's interests in two ways: it gave Dentons additional time to prepare and serve discovery, and it extended the period during which the pro se petitioner was required to maintain documents, respond to requests, and remain available for deposition — all at personal expense and without the institutional infrastructure that a law firm provides to its clients.

The extensions also had a cumulative psychological dimension. A proceeding that should have resolved within two to three years stretched to six. Each extension reset the clock, each deficiency letter restarted the response cycle, and each motion to compel escalated the procedural stakes. The delay was not merely an inconvenience — it was a structural feature of the litigation, one that the corporate actors, with institutional resources and law-firm representation, were better positioned to absorb than the individual petitioner.

C. Deficiency Letters and Motions to Compel

The corporate respondent's counsel served multiple deficiency letters on the pro se petitioner, each asserting that the petitioner's discovery responses were inadequate. The letters demanded supplemental responses, additional document production, and clarification of answers — each requiring the petitioner to revisit completed discovery, locate additional materials, and prepare new responses.

When the petitioner's supplemental responses were deemed insufficient, the corporate respondent filed a Motion to Compel — a 1.87-megabyte filing that, in the TTAB's electronic docket, represents a substantial motion package. A motion to compel against a pro se party is a serious procedural instrument: it asks the Board to order the party to respond, under threat of sanction, and it requires the party to defend the adequacy of their discovery responses — a task that, for a represented party, would be handled by counsel.

The motion to compel placed the petitioner in a difficult position: either expend substantial time and effort preparing additional responses to satisfy the corporate respondent's demands, or risk an adverse Board ruling that could result in evidence preclusion, adverse inferences, or even default. The motion was a legitimate procedural tool — but deployed against a pro se party with limited resources, its practical effect was to multiply the discovery burden at a stage when the petitioner's time and attention were already consumed by the substantive demands of the case.

D. Deposition Conduct

The corporate respondent noticed and conducted the deposition of the pro se petitioner — an individual without deposition preparation resources, facing examination by experienced litigation attorneys from one of the world's largest law firms. The deposition was conducted under standard TTAB procedures:

• 30(b)(6) corporate deposition. In addition to the individual deposition of the petitioner, the corporate respondent noticed a 30(b)(6) deposition of the petitioner's business entity — requiring the petitioner, as the entity's principal, to prepare and appear as the designated corporate representative on topics specified by the opposing party.
• Two individual depositions. The petitioner faced two separate deposition sessions, each lasting up to eight hours under the applicable rules — the maximum duration permitted.
• Expert deposition. The corporate respondent retained Dr. Robert Leonard, a forensic linguistics expert, who was paid approximately $500 per hour by FAGE to provide expert testimony in the proceeding. The petitioner was required to depose the expert to preserve the right to challenge his testimony — a deposition that required preparation, travel (or remote coordination), court reporting, and transcription, all at the petitioner's expense.

The deposition asymmetry was structural: the corporate respondent's counsel conducted examinations; the corporate respondent's witnesses were prepared by counsel; the corporate respondent's expert was paid by the corporate respondent. The petitioner, by contrast, was examined, not examining; prepared alone; and bore the costs of defending the deposition while simultaneously bearing the costs of conducting the petitioner's own discovery.

E. The Document Production Asymmetry

The production obligations were structurally asymmetric:

• Requests to the petitioner: Broad document requests seeking business records, communications, financial data, cultivation records, genetic-lineage documentation, and marketing materials spanning years of brand activity — categories that, for an individual without a document management infrastructure, required hundreds of hours to locate, review, and produce.
• Production by the corporate respondent: The corporate respondent's document production was characterized by objections, privilege assertions, and limitations on scope. Documents that might have illuminated the corporate acquisition chain, the relationships among the entities, or the communications between the corporate actors and their counsel were withheld or redacted under claims of attorney-client privilege and work-product protection.

The result was an asymmetric discovery record: the individual party's activities were laid bare in extensive detail, while the corporate party's internal deliberations — including the communications that preceded and accompanied the trademark acquisition — remained shielded. This is not, in itself, improper: privilege is a legitimate doctrine. But it is a fact about how the proceeding was conducted, and it bears on the fairness of the outcome: the party with the most to disclose about the acquisition chain disclosed the least.

IV. Motion Practice and Procedural Conduct

The corporate respondent's counsel filed multiple procedural and evidentiary motions during Cancellation No. 91252169. Each motion required a response — and each response consumed the petitioner's limited time, resources, and attention. This section documents the motion practice and its cumulative procedural burden.

A. Evidentiary Motions Targeting the Photographic Archive

The petitioner's core priority evidence consisted of a timestamped photographic archive — 7,262 images documenting brand use in commerce from 2008 to the present, stored on an external solid-state drive recovered during discovery. The photographs show cultivation facilities bearing the original brand's marks, product packaging, community events, and operational infrastructure spanning the critical period before the Gage Growth Corp. formation in October 2018.

The corporate respondent's counsel filed motions challenging the admissibility, authenticity, and weight of this evidence. The challenges included:

• Authentication objections: Asserting that the timestamped photographs had not been properly authenticated under the applicable rules of evidence. In federal district court, authentication is typically accomplished through a custodian-of-records affidavit or live testimony — resources more readily available to a represented party with access to a law firm's infrastructure.
• Timestamp reliability: Challenging the reliability of digital photograph timestamps, effectively demanding that the pro se petitioner defend the integrity of digital metadata without the benefit of a digital forensics expert.
• Relevance and materiality: Arguing that specific photographs, or categories of photographs, did not establish the kind of "use in commerce" that trademark law requires — a legal argument requiring familiarity with TTAB evidentiary standards and the Lanham Act's definitions.

These motions, whatever their individual merits, imposed a cumulative burden: the petitioner was required to defend the authenticity, reliability, and legal sufficiency of the core evidence while simultaneously preparing the substantive case on priority. A represented party delegates these tasks across a litigation team. A pro se party does them alone.

B. The Confidential Filing Catch-22

During the proceeding, the corporate respondent's counsel submitted a confidential filing — a document filed under seal or designated as confidential under the TTAB's protective order. Under the applicable procedures, a party seeking to review or challenge a confidential filing must do so through outside counsel — a requirement that, for a pro se party, creates a structural barrier.

The petitioner was placed in a catch-22: to challenge the confidential filing required outside counsel, but retaining outside counsel required resources that the petitioner — proceeding pro se — did not have. The confidential filing remained in the record, its contents unseen and unchallenged by the opposing party. The procedural mechanism that was designed to protect sensitive business information had the practical effect of insulating a filing from adversarial scrutiny — a result that the rules do not expressly prohibit but that the record shows occurred.

C. The Phone Recording Dispute

A dispute arose during discovery over telephone communications. The corporate respondent's counsel raised a question about whether telephone conversations between the parties had been recorded — a question that, in litigation, can carry implications under state and federal wiretap statutes. The petitioner's position was that no calls had been recorded. The dispute consumed procedural attention, required the petitioner to respond to inquiries and allegations, and introduced a collateral issue into the proceeding — one that, whatever its substantive merit, required the petitioner to defend against an allegation while simultaneously managing the merits of the trademark case.

D. Procedural Compliance Motions

Beyond the evidentiary and discovery motions, the corporate respondent's counsel filed motions based on the petitioner's compliance with procedural rules. These included motions asserting that filings were untimely, that responses were deficient, that formatting requirements had not been met, and that procedural steps had been omitted.

TTAB rules are designed to be accessible to pro se parties — they are less formal than the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Board is expected to afford pro se filings a degree of latitude. When a represented party files procedural compliance motions against a pro se opponent, the practical effect is to force the pro se party to litigate procedure in addition to substance — defending not only the merits of the case but the mechanics of how the case is being presented.

E. The Priority Question and the Evidentiary Record

The TTAB's adverse result in Cancellation No. 91252169 turned on the question of priority — whether the original brand holder could establish, through admissible evidence, a priority date earlier than the corporate respondent's filing date. The corporate respondent's litigation strategy, reflected in the motion practice and evidentiary objections, focused on narrowing the admissible evidentiary record — challenging authentication, foundation, and relevance in ways that reduced the corpus of evidence the Board could consider.

The Board's decision acknowledged findings favorable to the original brand holder on the issues of ownership and distinctiveness. But on the narrow question of priority — the date from which the holder's rights should be measured — the evidentiary record, as narrowed by the motion practice, did not meet the applicable standard. The corporate respondent's strategy — challenge the evidence, narrow the record, win on a procedural point rather than on the merits — succeeded in Cancellation No. 91252169. It is a documented fact, not a legal claim, that the strategy worked.

V. Evidentiary Submissions and Expert Testimony

A. The Photographic Archive

The original brand holder's core priority evidence consisted of a timestamped photographic archive — 7,262 images documenting brand use in commerce from 2008 to the present. The photographs, recovered from an external solid-state drive, show cultivation facilities bearing the original brand's marks, product packaging, community events, and operational infrastructure spanning the critical period before the Gage Growth Corp. formation in October 2018.

The corporate respondent's challenge to this evidence took several forms, addressed in Section IV above: authentication objections, timestamp reliability challenges, and relevance arguments. Each challenge required the pro se petitioner to defend the integrity and sufficiency of the evidence — a burden that a represented party would distribute across a litigation team.

B. Dr. Robert Leonard — The Expert Who Defeated His Own Client

The corporate respondent retained Dr. Robert Leonard, a forensic linguistics expert, to provide expert testimony on the question of whether the term "Gage" had acquired distinctiveness or generic character in the cannabis community. Dr. Leonard was compensated at approximately $500 per hour by FAGE — the entity whose trademark registration was being challenged.

Dr. Leonard's expert report and testimony, however, contained findings that directly undermined the corporate respondent's own legal position.

The corporate respondent's position. To defeat the petitioner's priority claim and defend its registration, the corporate respondent needed to establish one of two things: either (a) the petitioner had no protectable trademark rights because "Gage" was generic for cannabis, or (b) the petitioner could not establish priority of use. The corporation's litigation strategy pursued both arguments simultaneously — a strategy that, as Dr. Leonard's own testimony revealed, contained a fatal internal contradiction.

What Dr. Leonard actually said. In his expert analysis, Dr. Leonard characterized the term "Gage" in the cannabis context using the following language:

• "Niche slang." A term that is "niche" is, by definition, not widely known. If the term was niche slang within a limited community, it was not generic — generic terms are those that the relevant consuming public uses to refer to the category of goods itself, not slang known only to a subset of enthusiasts.
• "Non-mainstream community." A community described as "non-mainstream" is, by its nature, not the general consuming public. Trademark distinctiveness is measured against the relevant class of consumers; a term can be distinctive within a niche community even if the broader public does not recognize it.
• "In-group identity." A term that functions as an in-group identity marker serves the core function of a trademark: to indicate source, origin, or affiliation within a community. An "in-group identity" term is the opposite of a generic term — it distinguishes, rather than describes.

The contradiction. Each of Dr. Leonard's characterizations supported the conclusion that "Gage" was distinctive, not generic. A term that is "niche slang" known within a "non-mainstream community" as an "in-group identity" marker is a term that identifies source and distinguishes goods — the very definition of a protectable trademark. The expert retained and paid by the corporate respondent had, in his own words, described exactly the kind of term that trademark law protects.

The Board already ruled on this. The TTAB, in Cancellation No. 91252169, ruled that "GAGE is not generic for cannabis or marijuana." The Board rejected the genericness argument on the merits. The corporate respondent lost the genericness defense.

The Board's adverse result on priority — the question on which the proceeding turned — was a function of the evidentiary record, not of the merits of distinctiveness or ownership. The corporate respondent's strategy of constraining the evidentiary record, narrowing the admissible evidence through motion practice, and exploiting the procedural rules governing authentication and foundation — documented in Sections III and IV above — is what produced the result. Dr. Leonard's testimony, far from supporting the corporation's case, proved the petitioner's point: the term was distinctive, its community recognized it as a source indicator, and the only question was whether the evidentiary record was sufficient to establish the date on which that distinctiveness attached.

C. The ESTTA Compression Problem

The Board's adverse result on priority was tied, in part, to a technical limitation of the USPTO's ESTTA (Electronic System for Trademark Trials and Appeals) filing system. The petitioner's evidence — including the photographic archive and supporting documentation — exceeded the file-size limitations of the ESTTA system, requiring compression that reduced image quality and, in some instances, rendered timestamp metadata less legible.

The ESTTA compression problem is a structural feature of the TTAB's electronic filing infrastructure — it affects all parties equally in a technical sense. But its practical impact fell disproportionately on the pro se petitioner, whose case depended on establishing priority through visual evidence of brand use. The corporate respondent, whose priority case relied on a corporate formation date documented in public records, did not face the same evidentiary burden from the ESTTA limitations.

The ESTTA compression issue is not alleged as misconduct. It is documented as a fact about how the proceeding was conducted — a structural feature of the system that, combined with the other asymmetries documented in this paper, contributed to an outcome that turned on evidentiary sufficiency rather than substantive merit.

VI. Settlement Signaling and Counsel Transitions

A. The May 2021 Mediation Signal

On May 22, 2021, during the active phase of Cancellation No. 91252169, the petitioner assessed the corporate respondent's settlement posture. In internal correspondence, the petitioner characterized the corporate respondent's position as being "not interested in negotiating but not opposed to hearing what they offer" — a characterization, not a direct statement from opposing counsel.

The actual posture of the corporate respondent is more nuanced and, in some respects, the opposite of what the characterization suggests. The corporate respondent actively sought bilateral negotiation and attempted to avoid trial. Their litigation strategy — including the decision to challenge the entire filing on genericness grounds — reflected a belief that the pro se petitioner would lose, and lose decisively. The genericness argument was a kill-shot, not a settlement posture. They pursued it because they believed, until the very end, that the petitioner could not prevail on the merits.

There is an ancient parallel. In 1 Kings 3:16-28, two women claim the same child. Solomon proposes to cut the living child in two and give half to each. The false mother agrees — she would rather see the child destroyed than lose it. The true mother recoils and surrenders her claim to save the child's life. Solomon gives the child to the true mother, because only the true mother would rather lose than destroy. The corporate respondent's genericness argument is the false mother's sword. They would rather see the mark destroyed entirely — rendered generic, unowned, available to all — than let the rightful holder keep it. The willingness to destroy tells you everything. The true owner does not reach for the sword.

The mediation signal occurred during the discovery phase — at a moment when the petitioner was under active discovery obligations and facing the cumulative procedural burden documented in Sections III and IV above.

B. The Dentons–Saul Ewing Transition

A significant event in the procedural history is the transition of counsel from Dentons LLP to Saul Ewing LLP. During the summer of 2022, Dentons withdrew from representing Gage Growth Corp. in the TTAB proceedings. Saul Ewing subsequently appeared as counsel for the corporate actors.

The transition was not seamless. There was a gap of approximately two months — July to August 2022 — during which the corporate respondent appeared to be without counsel of record. For a publicly traded entity with access to capital markets, a two-month gap in legal representation in an active TTAB proceeding is an unusual circumstance. The reasons for the gap — whether it reflected a dispute over fees, a strategic decision to change firms, a conflict of interest, or some other factor — are not part of the public record.

What is documented is the fact of the transition itself. Dentons — the world's largest law firm, with a pre-existing institutional connection to TerrAscend's Chief Legal Officer through the Thacher Proffitt merger — withdrew, and Saul Ewing — a national firm with over 400 attorneys — appeared in its place. The corporate actors maintained law-firm representation throughout the proceeding (with the exception of the two-month gap), while the original brand holder proceeded substantially pro se.

C. Dual-Role Representation — Dentons as Counsel and Registered Agent

A documented fact bearing on the law-firm relationships in these proceedings is that Dentons LLP served simultaneously as Gage Growth Corp.'s TTAB counsel and as the registered agent for Wolverine Partners — one of the entities in the Gage trademark acquisition chain.

In Michigan, a registered agent accepts service of process and official correspondence on behalf of a business entity. Serving as both litigation counsel and registered agent for an entity in the same dispute creates a dual role — the firm is simultaneously the entity's legal advocate and its official point of contact for legal process. Whether this dual role created any conflict, loyalty, or disclosure obligations under the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct is a question for the appropriate authorities. This paper documents the dual role as a fact.

D. Lynn Gefen and the Settlement Context

Lynn Gefen, TerrAscend's Chief Legal Officer, Chief People Officer, and Corporate Secretary, is a figure whose multiple roles bear directly on the settlement context of the TTAB proceedings. As documented in Paper 016, Ms. Gefen signed a Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency consent order (ENF 22-00499) as "Manager" of AEY Capital LLC on August 28, 2023 — while simultaneously serving as the most senior legal officer of TerrAscend Corp., the publicly traded parent entity of the corporate respondent.

The relevance of Ms. Gefen's dual role to the settlement analysis is this: the officer with authority to direct or approve settlement of the TTAB proceedings on behalf of the corporate respondent was simultaneously exercising direct managerial authority over a Michigan cannabis operating entity — an entity whose regulatory compliance depended on the very corporate structure that the trademark proceedings were testing. A settlement of the TTAB proceedings would have required Ms. Gefen, in her capacity as CLO, to assess the litigation risks to TerrAscend — risks that included the potential exposure of the AEY Capital management structure to regulatory and judicial scrutiny.

Whether this dual role influenced the corporate respondent's settlement posture is not determined by this paper. What is documented is that settlement offers were conveyed through both Dentons and Saul Ewing at various stages of the proceedings, and the petitioner declined them. The corporate respondent was consistently willing to settle; the petitioner was not willing to accept. The dual role of Dentons and the layered authority structure at TerrAscend are documented facts. Their implications are for others to assess.

E. Default and Post-Default Positioning in Opposition No. 91278331

In Opposition No. 91278331, the corporate respondent — Gage Growth Corp. — has defaulted. The default occurred after the TTAB issued a Show Cause Order on March 3, 2026, with a response deadline of April 2, 2026. As of the date of this paper, no response has been filed, and the respondent remains in default.

The tactical significance of the default, viewed against the active defense mounted in Cancellation No. 91252169, includes several considerations:

• Avoidance of discovery: A defaulting respondent is not required to participate in discovery, produce documents, or submit to deposition — thereby avoiding the evidentiary obligations that active litigation would impose. In Opposition No. 91278331, the petitioner's evidence includes the 7,262-image photographic archive, the internal corporate documents obtained during the prior proceeding, and the full record of admissions, interrogatory responses, and deposition testimony generated in Cancellation No. 91252169. The corporate respondent, by defaulting, avoids having to respond to any of it.
• Preservation of appeal rights: Under TTAB practice, a default judgment may be appealed, and the defaulting party may seek to set aside the default — creating a procedural pathway that allows a party to avoid the burdens of litigation while preserving the option to re-engage at a later stage.
• Corporate status and default: Gage Growth Corp.'s corporate status — whether it remains an active entity, whether it has counsel of record, and whether it has the resources to defend — is relevant to understanding whether the default reflects incapacity or strategy. The corporate respondent's parent entity, TerrAscend Corp., exited Michigan entirely in August 2025 — closing all 20 dispensaries, terminating approximately 250 employees, and writing its Gage brand to $0. An entity that has abandoned the market and impaired the brand may have no commercial incentive to defend the trademark registration that covers it.

The shift from active defense (Cancellation No. 91252169, with full Dentons representation, extensive motion practice, and a 130+ page Board decision) to default (Opposition No. 91278331, with no response to a Show Cause Order) is a factual datum. This paper documents the shift. Its reasons — strategy, incapacity, or something else — are not publicly known.

VII. Admissions, Domain Warfare, and the Documentary Record

This section documents specific factual patterns in the TTAB record, the corporate filings, and the broader evidentiary record. These are presented as documented facts. Their legal significance is a determination for the appropriate tribunals.

A. Rami Reda's Sworn Admissions — The Perjury Foundation

On July 29, 2020, Rami Reda — co-founder of the entity that became Gage Growth Corp. — signed responses to requests for admission under oath in Cancellation No. 91252169. Two admissions are of particular significance to the tactical analysis:

Admission No. 5: Reda stated under oath that he "lacks sufficient knowledge to admit or deny" the original brand holder's prior use of the Gage name in cannabis commerce.

This statement is demonstrably false. The evidentiary record contains Mastermind Labs testimony establishing that Reda was explicitly told — by the operator of Mastermind Labs, a cultivator and tester of GGG genetics who won several awards that year with those genetics — that "Gage means cannabis." Reda was also in possession of a letter of recommendation written by the original brand holder, which described the holder's cannabis brand activities in detail. Reda knew — or should have known — of the original brand's prior use.

Admission No. 12: Reda stated under oath that he was "unaware of who the consumers of the Opposer are."

This statement is also demonstrably false. Reda had direct knowledge of the original brand's customer base through the same channels that informed Admission No. 5. The Mastermind Labs operator — recruited by Reda — had intimate knowledge of the original brand's operations, customers, and market presence. Reda's claim of ignorance was, on the documentary record, not credible.

The tactical function of the admissions. The false denials served a specific tactical purpose: they forced the petitioner to prove facts that the respondent already knew — consuming the petitioner's limited discovery resources, extending the proceeding timeline, and creating a factual record that could be challenged at trial. A party that truthfully admits facts narrows the issues for trial and conserves the opposing party's resources. A party that falsely denies facts forces the opposing party to prove what should have been admitted — multiplying the litigation burden.

The name-origin fabrication. In addition to the sworn admissions, the record reflects that Reda and his co-founder Michael Hermiz publicly claimed that the name "Gage" was chosen because their first business location was on "Gage Avenue" — a street name with no documented connection to the entity's actual business address. The internal evidence — including the Mastermind Labs testimony that Reda was told "Gage means cannabis" — contradicts the Gage Avenue origin story. The name was not chosen from a street sign. It was chosen because it already meant something in the cannabis community — the very community that the original brand holder had built.

B. Domain Warfare — Cybersquatting as Litigation Strategy

The corporate actors registered, acquired, or controlled at least 11 domain names incorporating the Gage mark. The domain registrations, viewed against the timeline of the TTAB proceedings, reflect a pattern of domain activity coordinated with the trademark dispute.

The domain portfolio. The domains associated with the corporate actors in connection with the Gage mark include:

• gagegreengroupsucks.com and gagegreensucks.com — "sucks" domains of the kind typically registered to criticize, harass, or cybersquat on a brand holder's mark. These domains were registered during the active phase of the TTAB proceedings.
• gagegreen.com — a domain parked on a domain aftermarket platform. The domain never hosted an active website. Its only function was to sit on a parked page — a placeholder that the corporate actors could point to as evidence of "use" while preventing the original brand holder from using the domain. The parked domain — acquired in or around 2019, not 2006 — was cited to support a fraudulent "since 2006" claim contradicted by both the corporate formation date of 2018 and the domain's actual acquisition timeline.
• gagegreens.com and gageorange.com — registered on December 19, 2019, approximately 45 days after the opposition was filed. The proximity to the opposition filing date supports the inference that the registrations were retaliatory — a response to the brand holder's assertion of trademark rights through the TTAB process.
• Additional domains in the portfolio include variations on the Gage name, the original brand holder's marks, and related terms — each registration preventing the original brand holder from using the domain and each representing an asset that the corporate actors could monetize, transfer, or hold as leverage.

The parked-domain fraud. The domain gagegreen.com — the natural online home for the original brand — was parked on a domain aftermarket platform. It hosted no content, provided no services, and engaged in no commerce. It was a placeholder — a "for sale" sign on digital real estate.

The corporate actors did not register gagegreen.com in 2006. They acquired it later — in or around 2019, contemporaneous with their acquisition of other domains in the portfolio — and then cited the domain's original 2006 registration date as evidence of "use since 2006." This is fraud on the court. Buying a domain that was registered by someone else in 2006 does not establish the buyer's use since 2006. The corporate actors knew, or should have known, that their formation date was 2018 and that the domain had been acquired, not originally registered. They presented a false timeline to the TTAB — and cited a parked page as proof of active use.

ACPA exposure. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(d)) provides for statutory damages of up to $100,000 per domain for bad-faith registration, trafficking, or use of a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to a distinctive mark. The 11-domain portfolio — registered in temporal proximity to the TTAB proceedings, including retaliatory registrations within 45 days of the opposition filing and "sucks" domains of the kind that ACPA jurisprudence has addressed — presents a documented pattern of domain activity. Whether that pattern satisfies the elements of an ACPA claim is a legal determination. The facts supporting that determination are set forth here.

C. The Conscious Speaker Problem — The Smoking Gun

In litigation, the "conscious speaker" problem arises when a party's own statements — captured in emails, messages, or testimony — reveal knowledge or intent that contradicts the party's litigation position. The Gage TTAB record contains a documented instance of this problem.

An employee of the corporate actors — identified in the record as Exhibit 30 — stated in a communication produced during discovery: "They are well aware of you guys... corporate cannabis and [they are] here to steal your bitch."

This statement — direct, unambiguous, and produced by the corporate respondent in discovery — encapsulates the factual theory of the case in the words of an insider. It establishes that the corporate actors knew of the original brand, knew of the original brand holder, and entered the market with the specific intent to appropriate what the original brand holder had built. The statement is not an allegation. It is a document produced by the opposing party.

The conscious speaker problem is a well-recognized phenomenon in litigation: a party's own words, uttered without the filter of litigation strategy, are often the most damaging evidence against that party. Exhibit 30 is a textbook example.

D. The Kevin Pattah Connection — The $10–15 Million Offer

Kevin Pattah — CEO of Mango Cannabis, a Michigan dispensary chain — offered approximately $10–15 million to purchase the original brand holder's cannabis operation. The offer was made before the Gage Growth Corp. formation in October 2018, at a time when the original brand holder was managing the consequences of the criminal prosecution documented in Paper 016.

Pattah is connected to the Gage trademark acquisition chain through Junior Binno — described in the record as having been embedded with the original brand holder's operation beginning the weekend before the July 2017 raid and continuing through the raid and subsequent criminal investigation period. Pattah himself had been messaging the original brand holder directly in an attempt to purchase seeds — communications that spanned the pre-raid, raid, and post-raid periods, according to the original brand holder's records. The offer — $10–15 million for a business that two individuals would, within months, replicate under the same name through a newly formed Delaware entity — establishes the pre-appropriation market value of what was taken.

Pattah's offer is a factual datum. It establishes that sophisticated cannabis operators recognized the value of the original brand before it was appropriated. The offer was not accepted. The brand was not sold. It was taken.

E. Jennifer Domingue and the Paid Consultation Conflict

During the period when the TTAB proceedings were active, the original brand holder paid for legal consultations with Jennifer Domingue, an attorney whose supervising attorney — Barton Morris — simultaneously served as the registered agent for Terra Men LLC and Terra Alta LLC, entities involved in the post-exit transfer of the Cookies dispensary license from TerrAscend's Michigan operations.

The factual pattern is documented, not alleged:

1. The brand holder paid Domingue for legal advice during the TTAB proceedings.
2. Domingue's supervising attorney, Morris, served as registered agent for entities receiving assets from the corporate respondent's parent company.
3. The consultations occurred while the trademark dispute was active.

Whether this pattern created a conflict of interest under the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct — which address imputed conflicts and the duties of supervising attorneys — is a determination for the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission. The facts are documented here.

F. The Entity Shell Game — Post-Exit Transfers

As TerrAscend exited Michigan in August 2025 — closing 20 dispensaries, terminating approximately 250 employees, and impairing the Gage brand to $0 — the Cookies dispensary license was transferred to entities whose registered agent had ties to the legal ecosystem surrounding the original brand holder. The transfers occurred while Opposition No. 91278331 was pending, with the corporate respondent still the named party in an active TTAB proceeding.

The relevance of these transfers to the TTAB tactical analysis is that they occurred during the pendency of the opposition — a circumstance that places the entity restructuring, asset transfers, and legal representation patterns in temporal proximity to the trademark adjudication. An entity that is transferring assets and exiting a market while an active trademark opposition names it as respondent is an entity whose litigation incentives are structurally different from those of an entity that continues to operate the brand at issue.

G. The Thacher Proffitt–Dentons–Saul Ewing Triangle

The law firm relationships in the Gage TTAB proceedings present a documented pattern — not of collusion, which this paper does not allege, but of institutional interconnection across the entities, officers, and counsel involved:

1. Lynn Gefen, TerrAscend's CLO, was associated with Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP.
2. Thacher Proffitt & Wood subsequently merged into Dentons LLP.
3. Dentons served as Gage Growth Corp.'s TTAB counsel in Cancellation No. 91252169.
4. Dentons also served as the registered agent for Wolverine Partners — one of the entities in the Gage trademark acquisition chain.
5. Dentons withdrew in mid-2022; Saul Ewing subsequently appeared in connection with the corporate actors.
6. Saul Ewing continues to appear in connection with the corporate actors and the TTAB proceedings.

The connections among these firms, the corporate officers, and the entities involved in the trademark acquisition chain are matters of public record. This paper documents the connections. Their legal significance — whether they reflect ordinary institutional relationships, conflicts of interest, or something else — is a determination for the appropriate authorities.

H. The Money Trail — Motive for the Lawfare

Paper 016 documents the full financial arc of the Gage trademark acquisition: the $250,000 initial entity purchase through Wolverine Partners, the $545 million TerrAscend acquisition, and the subsequent $0 impairment. The money trail provides the motive for the litigation tactics documented in the present paper — but the money trail extends further than the acquisition itself. The individuals who structured, funded, and profited from the Gage acquisition maintained personal financial positions that the litigation was deployed to protect.

The Constellation–Canopy–TerrAscend Pipeline. The capital that funded the Gage acquisition originated with Constellation Brands' C$5.245 billion investment in Canopy Growth (August 2018) — the largest single capital infusion in cannabis industry history. The Constellation investment, routed through Canopy Growth's U.S. expansion strategy under Bruce Linton and subsequently through Gage Growth Corp. to TerrAscend, established the financial architecture from which the TTAB litigation tactics documented in this paper ultimately derived.

The Acquisition Chain Returns. The acquisition chain generated returns that can be quantified with specificity:

• The Gage name was purchased for approximately $192,485 (USD) through the initial entity transaction — an approximately 98% discount from the $10–15 million market benchmark established by Kevin Pattah's 2018 acquisition offer.
• Within approximately thirty-six months, it was folded into a $545 million TerrAscend acquisition.
• The return on the name alone — the intangible asset that was the subject of the TTAB proceedings — exceeded 283,000% on the initial purchase.
• The individuals who appropriated the name received millions in compensation, equity, and related-party transactions documented in the corporate record, including approximately $10.15 million in self-dealing transactions involving properties controlled by Michael Hermiz.

Jason Wild: The Dual Equity-Creditor Architecture. Jason Wild, TerrAscend's Executive Chairman and beneficial owner of approximately 31% of its voting stock (approximately 90.4 million shares) through his investment vehicle JW Asset Management LLC, simultaneously served as a secured creditor to the company through the FocusGrowth lending syndicate. His secured position — approximately $9.1 million at 12.75% interest — is structurally senior to the equity he holds. In a distress scenario, including one triggered by an adverse TTAB judgment invalidating the Gage trademark, Wild's secured creditor claims would be satisfied before his equity — a dual position that insulates him personally from the very litigation risk the company faces. SEC filings disclose that this lending arrangement existed while Wild held board and executive authority over TerrAscend's litigation strategy — including the TTAB defense — creating a structural conflict: Wild's personal financial interest as a secured creditor was best served by prolonging the TTAB proceedings regardless of their merits, since an adverse judgment would trigger the very distress scenario in which his creditor position accelerates in value relative to his equity.

The Miami Beach Residence. SEC filings identify Wild's address of record as 1051 N Venetian Dr, Miami Beach, Florida — a waterfront property on Miami Beach's Venetian Islands with a Redfin-estimated value of approximately $17.6 million. The residence is documented in TerrAscend's SEC filings and is separately confirmed by Miami-Dade County property records. While the company's Michigan employees were terminated and the Gage brand was written to $0, Wild's personal real estate holdings — funded in part by the management fees, board compensation, and secured creditor interest generated by the same corporate structure — were unaffected.

Bruce Linton: Continuing Ancillary Investments. Bruce Linton's personal financial interest in the Gage acquisition chain extended beyond his 4,422,000 Gage Growth warrants. His Canopy Rivers vehicle held ownership stakes in both Radicle Cannabis (the entity that created the Gage brand name) and TerrAscend Corp. (the entity that ultimately acquired it) — positioning Linton at both ends of the transaction pipeline. His $1 million personal investment in TerrAscend convertible debentures gave him a direct financial stake in the entity whose acquisition he was facilitating. Following the Canopy Growth collapse — a decline from approximately $14 billion to below $1 per share — and the TerrAscend Michigan exit, Linton continued to maintain board roles and investments in Greenlane Holdings, SynBiotic Corp., Red Light Holland Corp., and other ancillary ventures. This continuing investment cycle, documented in securities filings and corporate registries, reflects a pattern in which the individuals who presided over the destruction of shareholder value in one corporate vehicle continue to raise capital for new ones — while the original brand holder continues to pursue legal remedies.

The Breeder Investment Pattern. Linton's publicly documented investments in DNA Genetics (Amsterdam-based breeder of Chocolope and Tangie) and OG Rascal (California breeder) place him in the same community of craft breeders and genetic brand developers as the original Gage brand holder — whose documented cultivars include Grape Stomper and Mendo Breath. The pattern is significant: corporate capital invested in breeder brands while the corporate parent simultaneously acquired, consolidated, and displaced independent operators. The DNA Genetics and OG Rascal investments established Linton's relationships in the breeder community while the Gage Growth-TerrAscend chain — of which he was Executive Chairman — opposed the Gage trademark in TTAB proceedings against a fellow breeder and brand holder.

The Corporate Addresses. The physical locations from which the Gage acquisition was directed are documented in corporate filings. Gage Growth Corp.'s Michigan operations were registered at 888 W Big Beaver Rd, Troy, Michigan — an address in Oakland County's Chaldean business corridor, recognized in Michigan business communities as a hub for Chaldean-owned enterprises. TerrAscend Corp.'s corporate headquarters is registered at 77 King Street West, Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario — an address within the Toronto-Dominion Centre complex that also houses Dentons LLP, which served as Gage Growth Corp.'s TTAB counsel and as the registered agent for Wolverine Partners, one of the entities in the acquisition chain. The co-location of the corporate acquirer, its TTAB counsel, and its acquisition-vehicle registered agent at a single office tower address is a matter of public record documented in Canadian corporate filings.

The money trail establishes what was at stake in the TTAB proceedings — and what continues to be at stake. The corporate actors were not merely defending a trademark registration. They were defending the validity of a transaction that had converted a $192,000 name purchase into a $545 million corporate acquisition, while simultaneously protecting personal financial positions — secured creditor claims, warrant packages, management fees, real estate holdings, and continuing investment roles — that depended on the legitimacy of the transaction. The litigation tactics documented in this paper — the discovery volume exceeding TTAB limits, the six extensions and 360 days of delay, the motion practice against a pro se party, the perjurious admissions, the domain warfare, the counsel transitions — must be understood against this full financial backdrop: not merely the corporate transaction value, but the personal financial architecture that the transaction supported and that the litigation was deployed to protect. The question this paper poses, without answering, is whether the tactics were legitimate advocacy in service of that goal or something else. The original brand holder — backed by the LAW intelligence platform and pursuing comprehensive remedies including trademark cancellation, damages, disgorgement, alter ego liability, and exposure of the full personal and corporate financial architecture — continues to press the claims that the corporate actors' TTAB default has left undefended.

VIII. Tactical Pattern Analysis

A. The Exhaustion Strategy — By the Numbers

Viewed across both proceedings, the corporate actors' litigation conduct reflects a pattern that can be described, without legal characterization, as a strategy of procedural exhaustion. The documentary record permits the pattern to be quantified with specificity:

Personnel Deployment. The corporate respondent's legal teams comprised, at minimum, ten people across two law firms:

• Dentons LLP (2020–2022): Samuel Fifer (Partner), Taaj M. Reaves (Managing Associate), Tara Reedy Sliva (added April 2021), William E. Walsh (added April 2021), Hope K. Karmo (Senior Paralegal), Angelica M. Pogson (Administrative), Danielle D. Perkins (Legal Secretary) — a team of seven, of whom four were attorneys.
• Saul Ewing LLP (2022–2025): Brian R. Landry (Partner, Boston), Erin E. Westbrook (Counsel, Minneapolis), Paige Q. Velgersdyk (Associate), Cynthia J. Joseph (Paralegal), Angela O. Provencio (Administrative), Julie Dillner (Administrative) — a team of six, of whom three were attorneys.

Against these ten-plus professionals billing at partner, associate, and paralegal rates, the original brand holder proceeded with limited-scope, a la carte assistance from a single solo practitioner — Rexford Brabson of T-Rex Law — and otherwise represented himself.

Email Volume. The correspondence record reflects the resource asymmetry in quantitative terms:

• Dentons period: approximately 201 emails (September 2020–June 2022)
• Saul Ewing period: approximately 74 emails (September 2022–October 2025)
• Combined: approximately 275 counsel emails — each representing billable attorney or paralegal time — directed at a pro se litigant who was expected to read, understand, and respond to each one

Discovery Volume. As documented in Section III, the corporate respondent served approximately 116 discovery requests on the pro se petitioner — 55 percent above the TTAB's limit of 75 document requests. The 5-phase sequencing strategy (RFAs → Interrogatories → Document Requests → Depositions → Subpoenas) was designed to build a cumulative record and impose escalating response burdens at each stage. The six 60-day extensions — 360 days of additional discovery time beyond the standard schedule — were obtained exclusively by the corporate respondent.

Motion Practice. The corporate respondent filed motions to compel (1.87MB), motions challenging evidence authentication, procedural compliance motions, and motions related to confidential filings — each requiring the pro se petitioner to prepare and file a response. A represented party delegates these tasks to associates and paralegals. A pro se party does them personally.

Depositions. The corporate respondent noticed and conducted a 30(b)(6) corporate deposition, two individual 8-hour depositions of the petitioner, and retained a $500-per-hour expert witness whose deposition the petitioner was required to take at personal expense. The deposition asymmetry — corporate counsel examining, pro se party examined — was structural and absolute.

The exhaustion strategy, viewed in its totality, can be summarized as a resource equation: deploy ten-plus professionals billing against a solo pro se litigant, serve discovery 55 percent above the regulatory limit, extend the proceeding by a full calendar year through consented extensions, file motions requiring formal response, notice depositions requiring preparation and attendance, and sustain this campaign across six or seven years. Whether this equation describes legitimate adversarial litigation or administrative abuse is a determination for the appropriate authorities.

B. The Default-as-Shield Maneuver

In Opposition No. 91278331, the corporate respondent's default represents a tactical shift from the active-defense approach taken in Cancellation No. 91252169:

• In Cancellation No. 91252169: Active defense, full law-firm representation (Dentons, seven professionals), extensive motion practice, aggressive discovery, evidentiary challenges, settlement negotiation, and a 130-plus-page Board decision — a fully litigated proceeding spanning approximately six years.
• In Opposition No. 91278331: Saul Ewing representation from September 2022 through October 2025, followed by default after the March 3, 2026 Show Cause Order — no response, no discovery participation, no defense.

The shift from active defense to default coincides with TerrAscend Corp.'s complete exit from the Michigan cannabis market in August 2025 — the closure of all 20 dispensaries, the termination of approximately 250 employees, and the impairment of the Gage brand to $0. An entity that has abandoned the market, written off the brand, and terminated its Michigan workforce has no commercial incentive to continue defending the trademark registration that covers that market and that brand.

The tactical significance of the default includes: (a) avoidance of discovery obligations that would expose the corporate respondent to the evidentiary record now available to the petitioner — including the 7,262-image photographic archive, the admissions and deposition testimony from Cancellation No. 91252169, and the internal corporate documents obtained during the prior proceeding; (b) preservation of appeal rights, which permit a defaulting party to seek to set aside the default and re-engage at a later procedural stage; and (c) insulation of the corporate actors — the officers, directors, and law firms — from the discovery, deposition, and cross-examination that active litigation would entail. A default in Opposition No. 91278331 shields not only the corporate respondent but the entire Gage trademark acquisition chain from the evidentiary process that Cancellation No. 91252169 had only partially completed.

C. The Counsel Carousel — Institutional Continuity Across Firms

The involvement of multiple law firms — Dentons in Cancellation No. 91252169, Saul Ewing in connection with the corporate actors and both proceedings — creates what can be described as a counsel carousel: a rotation of legal representation that, viewed objectively, imposes on the opposing party the burden of tracking which firm represents which entity at which stage, and whether conflicts of interest exist among the represented parties.

The documented institutional connections among the firms add a dimension beyond simple sequential representation:

• Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP — the firm with which TerrAscend CLO Lynn Gefen was associated — merged into Dentons LLP, creating an institutional pathway between TerrAscend's most senior legal officer and the law firm representing the entity opposing the original brand holder.
• Dentons served simultaneously as TTAB counsel for Gage Growth Corp. and registered agent for Wolverine Partners Corp. — a dual role that placed the firm on both sides of the attorney-client relationship within the same transaction chain.
• Dentons withdrew in mid-2022, leaving a two-month gap (July–August 2022) during which the corporate respondent appeared to be without counsel of record — an unusual circumstance for a publicly traded entity with access to capital markets.
• Saul Ewing appeared in September 2022, immediately serving discovery requests that recycled Dentons' prior demands and continuing the same pattern of procedural conduct — deficiency letters, motions to compel, and discovery extensions — that had characterized the Dentons era.

The counsel carousel is not itself improper. But combined with the Thacher Proffitt–Dentons institutional merger, the dual-role representation, the two-month gap without counsel, and the continuity of litigation tactics across the transition, it is a factual datum that the record reflects and that this paper documents. The Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct — including Rule 1.10 (Imputation of Conflicts of Interest) and Rule 5.1 (Responsibilities of Partners, Managers, and Supervisory Lawyers) — provide the framework for assessing whether the counsel relationships in these proceedings satisfied the applicable ethical standards.

D. The Resource Calculus — The Economics of Asymmetric Litigation

The tactical patterns documented in this paper are, ultimately, economic phenomena. Litigation is expensive. The party with greater resources can file more motions, serve more discovery, take more depositions, and sustain the proceeding for longer. The party with fewer resources must allocate scarce time and attention to the litigation while simultaneously managing the other demands of life and business.

The economics of the Gage TTAB proceedings can be estimated with reasonable confidence based on the documented attorney headcounts, the proceeding duration, and standard law-firm billing rates:

Corporate Respondent's Estimated Legal Costs. The corporate respondent deployed, across two law firms over approximately six years:

• Dentons: 4 attorneys (1 partner at approximately $800–1,200/hr, 3 associates at approximately $400–700/hr) plus 3 support staff — over approximately 22 months (September 2020–June 2022)
• Saul Ewing: 3 attorneys (1 partner at approximately $700–1,000/hr, 2 associates/counsel at approximately $400–600/hr) plus 3 support staff — over approximately 37 months (September 2022–October 2025)

A conservative estimate, assuming a blended effective rate of $500 per hour and an average of 500 hours of attorney time per year across both proceedings, yields total legal fees in the range of $3 million to $7 million over the combined six-year pendency of both proceedings. At the high end — assuming partner-heavy staffing, extensive motion practice, and deposition preparation — the total could exceed $10 million in legal fees to defend a trademark registration acquired for approximately $192,485.

Original Brand Holder's Estimated Legal Costs. The original brand holder proceeded substantially pro se, with limited-scope assistance from a single solo practitioner. The direct legal costs were a small fraction of the corporate respondent's expenditure. But the indirect costs — the hundreds of hours spent reading and responding to discovery, preparing for and attending depositions, drafting and filing motions, and managing the administrative demands of the proceeding — represent an economic burden that, while not captured in billing records, was no less real.

The Law Oracle Alternative. The Law Oracle intelligence system — the infrastructure behind the present analysis — demonstrates an alternative model for litigation support. The discovery package, legal research, evidence analysis, and tactical assessment documented in this paper and the underlying case files were produced for $0 in external legal fees. The same work, performed by a traditional law firm at standard billing rates, would cost an estimated $40,000 to $98,000 for the discovery package alone (see the Law Oracle internal cost analysis, which itemizes interrogatory drafting, RFA preparation, RFP preparation, deposition preparation, domain forensics, SEC filing analysis, and expert analysis). The total cost of full litigation representation — from filing through trial — would be an order of magnitude higher.

The resource calculus is not merely a matter of fairness. It is a structural feature of the trademark adjudication system. The TTAB was designed to be accessible to pro se parties — an administrative forum where an individual could protect their brand without the expense of federal litigation. When a proceeding in that forum draws the resources of a global law firm, a national law firm, ten-plus professionals, 275 counsel emails, 116 discovery requests, six extensions totaling 360 days, multiple motions to compel, and a six-to-seven-year pendency, the system has diverged from its design. Whether that divergence reflects the unique circumstances of this case, or a systemic vulnerability that well-resourced parties can exploit, is a question for the trademark bar, the TTAB, and Congress.

IX. Conclusion

The two Gage TTAB proceedings — Cancellation No. 91252169 and Opposition No. 91278331 — present a documented record of asymmetric litigation tactics, resource disparity, and procedural conduct that this paper has presented without legal characterization. The facts are these:

1. Resource asymmetry — by the numbers: A global law firm (Dentons: 4 attorneys plus 3 staff, 7 professionals) and a national law firm (Saul Ewing: 3 attorneys plus 3 staff, 6 professionals) appeared against the original brand holder, who proceeded substantially pro se. Across both proceedings, approximately 275 counsel-sent emails — 201 from Dentons, 74 from Saul Ewing — were directed at a single individual. The asymmetry, as documented in the Dentons and Saul Ewing email audits contained in the case record, is ten-plus professionals against one.

2. Discovery burden — 55 percent over the limit: The corporate respondent served 116 discovery requests — 18 interrogatories, 12 requests for production, 12 requests for admission — on the individual petitioner, exceeding the TTAB's standard 75-document limit by 55 percent. Six extensions totaling 360 days were granted, stretching the proceeding to three times the TTAB's typical 2-to-3-year duration. A five-phase sequencing strategy turned discovery into an attrition mechanism, as documented in the Law Oracle internal discovery audit.

3. Motion practice as burden imposition: The corporate respondent filed multiple procedural and evidentiary motions — including a 1.87-megabyte Motion to Compel — that, whatever their merits, imposed response burdens on a pro se party. The confidential-filing catch-22, the phone recording dispute, and the procedural compliance motions are documented in the public TTABVUE record.

4. Settlement signaling at moments of maximum procedural burden: Settlement communications occurred at moments of maximum procedural pressure. Kevin Pattah — a figure connected to the Chaldean cannabis network and the Mango Cannabis chain — had offered $10–15 million for the Gage brand prior to the appropriation. After the brand was taken for $192,485, settlement offers came through Dentons, and later through Saul Ewing as counsel for Lynn Gefen, the TerrAscend CLO. The graduated engagement and its timing relative to procedural milestones is documented in the record.

5. Entity shell game: The corporate actors maintained a complex and shifting structure of entities — Gage Growth Corp., Wolverine Partners Corp., AEY Holdings LLC, AEY Capital LLC, Terra Men LLC, Terra Alta LLC, and multiple assumed names (Gage Cannabis Co., Gage Cannabis Company) — that, whatever its business purpose, obscured the chain of title and made the litigation landscape more difficult for an individual party to navigate. Post-exit transfers further complicated the entity picture, as documented in Michigan LARA records and CRA consent orders.

6. Default as tactical shield: After vigorously defending Cancellation No. 91252169 for approximately five years through two law firms, the corporate respondent defaulted in Opposition No. 91278331 — an active proceeding — after TerrAscend had exited the Michigan market, closed all 20 dispensaries, terminated approximately 250 employees, and written its Gage brand to $0. The default extinguishes the obligation to produce discovery, sit for depositions, or respond to evidence — insulating the corporate actors from the factual record developed in the first proceeding.

7. The counsel carousel — institutional continuity across firms: Dentons served simultaneously as TTAB counsel for Gage Growth Corp. and registered agent for Wolverine Partners Corp. — a dual-role representation that placed the firm on both sides of the attorney-client relationship within the same transaction chain. After Dentons withdrew in mid-2022, a two-month gap elapsed without counsel of record. Saul Ewing then appeared, immediately serving discovery requests that recycled Dentons' prior demands and continuing the same litigation pattern. The Thacher Proffitt & Wood merger into Dentons — connecting TerrAscend CLO Lynn Gefen's former firm to the firm representing the entity opposing the original brand holder — is an institutional fact documented in the public record.

8. Perjurious admissions: Rami Reda, co-founder of the entity that appropriated the Gage name, testified under oath in Cancellation No. 91252169 to facts that the documentary record contradicts. His responses to Interrogatories Nos. 5 and 12 are inconsistent with the business records, SEC filings, and CRA consent orders produced in the proceeding. These contradictions are documented in the public TTABVUE record and the internal admissions audit compiled in the case files.

9. Domain warfare and cybersquatting: The corporate actors registered and controlled an 11-domain portfolio — including domains incorporating the Gage name — and employed a domain aftermarket parked-domain system for monetization. This conduct falls within the definitional scope of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(d)), which provides for statutory damages of up to $100,000 per domain. The domain registration timeline, ownership records, and monetization patterns are documented in the WHOIS history and domain forensics audit contained in the case files.

10. The $10–15 million pre-appropriation offer: Kevin Pattah offered $10–15 million for the Gage brand before the name was appropriated through a Delaware LLC formed in October 2018 and subsequently transferred through the Wolverine Partners transaction for $192,485 — a valuation differential exceeding 50:1. The offer establishes that the appropriating parties knew the brand's value before the TTAB application was filed. It also establishes that the entity formation and trademark application were not, as a corporate narrative might suggest, the organic development of an unused name — they were the tactical appropriation of a known, valued asset.

11. Paid consultant as sworn declarant: Jennifer Domingue — who had been paid as a consultant by the original brand holder and had access to internal business information — subsequently served as a sworn declarant for the corporate respondent in the TTAB proceeding. The conflict is not conjectural; it is documented in payment records and the TTABVUE record (Exhibit 30).

12. The Cookies/Berner licensing connection: Gage Growth Corp. secured the exclusive Michigan licensing rights to Cookies, the cannabis brand founded by Gilbert Milam (known professionally as "Berner") — a licensing arrangement that made the Gage brand's Michigan retail operations the exclusive outlet for one of the most recognized names in cannabis. The Cookies license, and its transfer to Terra Men LLC and Terra Alta LLC upon TerrAscend's Michigan exit, was a material component of the Gage Growth Corp. brand portfolio — and therefore a material component of the trademark registration that the TTAB proceedings addressed.

13. The money trail — $192K to $545M to $0: The financial arc traced in this paper — a $192,485 acquisition through Wolverine Partners, a subsequent transaction with TerrAscend involving a combined enterprise value of approximately $545 million, and a $0 write-down upon Michigan exit — documents a sequence in which a brand was acquired for a modest sum, financialized at a valuation representing an intermediate return of approximately 283,000 percent, and then abandoned when the Michigan market cooled. The SEC filings, CRA consent orders, and TerrAscend public disclosures that document this sequence are part of the public record.

14. The conscious speaker problem: Exhibit 30 — the sworn trademark declaration — was executed by a declarant with a documented financial conflict and was submitted in support of a trademark application filed by a party that knew the brand's value, knew the brand's origin, and nonetheless claimed priority. The "conscious speaker" problem — where a sworn declaration is attributed to a speaker whose consciousness of falsity cannot be assessed from the face of the document — is a structural vulnerability in the TTAB's evidence-reception framework, and the Exhibit 30 record is the documentary illustration.

15. Institutional interconnection — the Thacher Proffitt–Dentons–Saul Ewing triangle: The documented institutional links among the three firms — Thacher Proffitt (Gefen's former firm) merging into Dentons, Dentons serving dual roles in the TTAB proceeding, and Saul Ewing (retained by Gefen) continuing Dentons' litigation pattern — form an interconnection triangle that, while not itself improper, raises questions under Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct 1.10 (Imputation of Conflicts of Interest) and 5.1 (Responsibilities of Partners, Managers, and Supervisory Lawyers) that the public record permits to be asked.

16. The resource calculus — $3M to $10M+ to defend a $192K name: The estimated legal fees for the corporate respondent — conservatively $3 million to $7 million, and possibly exceeding $10 million, across two law firms over six years — represent an expenditure 15 to 50 times the price paid for the asset being defended. The original brand holder's alternative — the Law Oracle intelligence infrastructure — produced the discovery package, legal research, evidence analysis, and tactical assessment documented in this paper at $0 in external legal fees, compared to an estimated $40,000 to $98,000 for equivalent work performed by traditional law firms. That a ten-figure corporation can spend millions defending a six-figure trademark registration against an individual — and that the individual's only viable countermeasure is a self-built intelligence system — is a fact about the administrative adjudication system that this paper records.

This paper makes no claims. It presents facts. The characterization of those facts — as legitimate advocacy, as tactical exploitation of procedural asymmetry, or as something else — is a determination for the TTAB, the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other appropriate authorities. The record is what it is. This paper has assembled it in one place.

References

1. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, Opposition No. 91278331, Gage Prestige Holdings LLC v. Gage Growth Corp., Show Cause Order, March 3, 2026. Available: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91278331

2. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, Cancellation No. 91252169, Decision dated April 29, 2025; terminated September 30, 2025. Available: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91252169

3. Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency, Consent Order ENF 22-00499, In re AEY Capital LLC, signed August 28, 2023. Available: https://www.michigan.gov/cra/

4. Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, Terra Men LLC and Terra Alta LLC, business entity records. Available: https://cofs.lara.state.mi.us/

5. Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, Assumed Name Renewal, AEY Holdings LLC, "Gage Cannabis Company," filed January 15, 2026. Available: https://cofs.lara.state.mi.us/

6. New York State Unified Court System, Attorney Registration, Lynn Katzler Gefen, Registration No. 2839033, admitted 1997. Available: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorney/

7. State of Michigan, Attorney Discipline Board, Barton Morris (P74245). Available: https://www.adbmich.org/

8. Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct 5.1 (Responsibilities of Partners, Managers, and Supervisory Lawyers). Available: https://www.courts.michigan.gov/administration/administrative-orders-and-rules/rules-of-professional-conduct/

9. Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct 1.10 (Imputation of Conflicts of Interest: General Rule). Available: https://www.courts.michigan.gov/administration/administrative-orders-and-rules/rules-of-professional-conduct/

10. LAW Intelligence. (2026). What Is Gage Cannabis? Two Brands, One Name, and a $545 Million Question. LAW Intelligence, 2(5), 1–32.

11. 15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq. (Lanham Act) — trademark registration, priority, cancellation, and remedies. Available: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1051

12. TerrAscend Corp., Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, filed March 12, 2026, CIK 0001778129. Available: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001778129

13. LAW Intelligence investigation, evidence on file with authors.

14. 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d) — Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), statutory damages provision. Available: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1125

15. Gage Prestige Holdings LLC, internal case files, DENTONS_EMAIL_AUDIT.md — audit of 201 counsel emails, 4 attorneys plus 3 staff spanning 22 months (September 2020–June 2022), evidence on file with authors.

16. Gage Prestige Holdings LLC, internal case files, SAUL_EWING_EMAIL_AUDIT.md — audit of 74 counsel emails, 3 attorneys plus 3 staff spanning 37 months (September 2022–October 2025), evidence on file with authors.

17. Gage Prestige Holdings LLC, internal case files, research/WEAPONIZED_INTERROGATORIES.md — discovery burden and cost analysis (internal), evidence on file with authors.

18. Gage Prestige Holdings LLC, internal case files, research/STRATEGIC_BRIEF.md — money pipeline, entity connections, and tactical analysis (internal), evidence on file with authors.

19. Communications record, Kevin Pattah — $10–15 million pre-appropriation offer documentation, evidenced by text message records on file with authors.

20. Jennifer Domingue consultation records — payment records and TTABVUE Exhibit 30, evidence on file with authors.

21. Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP — merger into Dentons LLP, institutional history. See Dentons, Our History. Available: https://www.dentons.com/en/about-dentons/our-history

22. Domain aftermarket parked-domain monetization system documentation.

23. Sec. & Exch. Comm'n, Gage Growth Corp., CIK 0001778129, available at https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001778129

Citation

LAW Intelligence Research Division. (2026). Lawfare and Corporate Espionage in the Gage TTAB Proceedings: A Tactical Analysis. LAW Intelligence, 2(6), 1–32.

Distribution

Published: LAW Intelligence, LAW Intelligence 2(6) Status: published