## Facts

- Healthcom, an Illinois company, provided at-home emergency response and remote monitoring services in many states and used the service mark “CareLink” in marketing those services.
- Healthcom’s CareLink offering involved monitoring equipment and a 24-hour response center supporting subscribers (directly or through member providers).
- Central Arkansas Area Agency on Aging, Inc. (CAAAI), an Arkansas nonprofit founded to provide services to elderly and disabled persons, adopted “CareLink” as the name for its service network and programs in a six-county region in central Arkansas.
- CAAAI registered “CareLink” under Arkansas trademark statutes and adopted the mark without knowledge of Healthcom’s program.
- When CAAAI began using the mark in its six-county region, Healthcom had no clients there; Healthcom’s pre-1995 Arkansas activity consisted of a single sale elsewhere in the state.
- By late 1995, the parties learned of each other’s use and each asserted rights to the “CareLink” mark in Arkansas.

## Issues

1. Whether CAAAI or Healthcom had the superior right to use the “CareLink” service mark within CAAAI’s six-county region based on priority of use and market penetration.
2. Whether CAAAI’s Arkansas trademark registration justified injunctive relief barring Healthcom from using “CareLink” anywhere in Arkansas.
3. What geographic scope of injunction was appropriate under the Lanham Act and related state-law claims when identical marks were used for related services.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit affirmed that CAAAI was entitled to injunctive relief as the prior user in its established six-county trade area.
- The court held the district court erred by issuing a statewide injunction based on CAAAI’s Arkansas registration.
- The court vacated the statewide scope of the injunction and remanded with instructions to modify the injunction to cover only the six Arkansas counties where CAAAI had used the mark.

## Legal Principles

- Rights in an unregistered mark asserted under Lanham Act § 43(a) are territorial and depend on actual use and market recognition, not abstract nationwide priority.
- A good-faith local user who is first to use a mark in a defined geographic market may obtain exclusive rights and injunctive relief in that market against a remote user lacking prior presence there.
- State trademark registration does not automatically create statewide exclusivity sufficient to extinguish another party’s rights outside the registrant’s actual trade area.
- Injunctive relief in trademark cases should be tailored to the geographic area where confusion is likely and where the senior user has established goodwill.

## Conclusion

The Eighth Circuit limited trademark injunctive relief to CAAAI’s proven six-county market, holding that Arkansas registration did not, by itself, justify a blanket statewide prohibition against Healthcom’s use of “CareLink” outside CAAAI’s actual area of use.


Nat’l Ass’n for Healthcare Commc’ns, Inc. v. Cent. Ark. Area Agency on Aging, Inc., 257 F.3d 732 (8th Cir. 2001)