I have been thinking about World Champ Tech v. Peloton because it quietly rearranges trademark doctrine. The Ninth Circuit’s memorandum tells a familiar story in a new setting, and in doing so, it makes a house-mark issue feel like a UI problem.
Here is the quick orientation. World Champ Tech owns “BIKE+” for a cycling-metrics app. Peloton later launched “Peloton Bike+.” The dispute proceeds as a reverse-confusion case, meaning the concern is that the junior user’s scale erases the senior’s identity. The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Peloton. So far, so ordinary. But the way the panel handled the house-mark issue is where things get interesting.
House Marks in the Abstract vs. House Marks in the App Store
In reverse-confusion cases, a dominant house mark can aggravate confusion. The intuition is simple: the junior brand is so loud that it drowns out the senior. That principle appears throughout the case law, and the Ninth Circuit acknowledged it. Then it pivoted. The panel concluded this was not a case where a house mark aggravated confusion.
Why not? The answer is entirely context-dependent. The opinion emphasized where consumers actually encounter the marks: the Apple App Store. It also emphasized what the App Store makes salient: the developer name. If the consumer sees “Bike+” in a marketplace that also prominently displays “Peloton,” and if the Peloton app itself doesn’t use “Bike+” as an app name, then the house mark functions as a signpost. It orients consumers.
This gets at something I keep returning to: in modern trademark disputes, the “similarity of the marks” factor is a comparison filtered through the mechanics of how people actually find, click, and buy things. The App Store’s UI is the analysis.
A Gentle Nudge from the Writ
I will mention, gently, that the cert petition cites empirical work I have done on confusion factors. The petition uses that work to make a narrower point: that similarity and relatedness tend to do most of the real work in confusion outcomes, and that courts sometimes “contextualize” those factors in ways that feel case-specific rather than systematic.
The Ninth Circuit’s move here is a good example of how that contextualization plays out in practice. The court said: similarity is measured in the environment where the marks live. In that environment, the house mark performs a source-identifying function. So the same doctrinal principle (house marks can aggravate reverse confusion) yields a different practical result.
That is worth sitting with, because it reveals how much doctrinal “flexibility” actually lives in context. The interface shaped the outcome.
The Curious Part
Here is the curiosity: the very fact that Peloton is a dominant house mark, which normally hurts the junior user in reverse-confusion cases, here helps it. Context reversed the valence of the factor. In some environments, a house mark is a megaphone. In others, it is a label on the bottle.
If you are litigating in platform-based markets, that distinction is outcome-relevant. The best way to argue a house-mark problem in 2026 probably involves screenshots, search results, and the concrete flows through which consumers actually encounter brand identifiers.
Where This Leads, Practically
For practitioners, the lesson is a familiar one with a modern twist: build the record around the encounter context. If the dispute lives in the App Store, make the App Store the evidence. If it lives in a marketplace interface, capture the marketplace interface. If it lives in a streaming platform or search results, show the flow. The question a court will eventually answer (does the house mark aggravate reverse confusion?) may be decided by where that mark appears and what else appears beside it.
For researchers, this is the crux of the case. The empirical work supports the proposition World Champ argues on appeal: similarity and relatedness are the two major gate factors, and both would seem to favor them here. If the Ninth Circuit hadn’t used this contextual logic to reframe how similarity works in an app-store environment, the analysis likely comes out differently. The entire case turns on this subtle move.
One More Thing
If you want a case that quietly illustrates how much modern trademark doctrine is about encounter design, World Champ Tech v. Peloton is a good one. It demonstrates that context is the way the factors work.
Call it a quiet reminder that in trademark law, as in life, where you meet matters almost as much as who you meet.
The Supreme Court is set to consider the writ later this month. I will check back in when that happens.
- Prof. Reichert