The TTAB has interpreted the Lanham Act to give broad standing to parties who claim they may be injured by a mark.
The cafe's clientele were notoriously "cruisy," leading many people over the years to compare the shop, with a sense of ironic disparagement, to its neighbors.
In 1998, television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and one of her guests, Howard Lyman, were involved in a lawsuit surrounding the Texas version of a food libel law known as the False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act of 1995, for a 1996 episode of her show in which the two made disparaging comments about beef in relation to the mad cow scare.