In perhaps the least surprising trademark decision of the past 12 months, and one that could have been rendered in under 5 pages (rather than the 50 it actually took), the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last Friday held that the Lanham Act’s Section 2(a) bar on registration of marks which “consist of or comprises immoral…or scandalous matter” is an unconstitutional, content-based restriction on speech. In re Brunetti, Appeal No. 2015-1109 (Fed. Cir. December 15, 2017). In that case, Erik Brunetti had toiled for more than 6 years attempting to register his mark, FUCT, for clothing. Those efforts were uniformly unsuccessful despite some weakly-creative arguments that the word, “fuct,” was not actually vulgar, and even if it was, Section 2(a) did not bar registration of “vulgar” marks.
Topics/Tags
Select- Intellectual Property
- Trademark
- Social Media
- Brexit
- Marketing
- Craft Brewing
- Branding
- Medical Marijuana
- Trademark Litigation
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
- Registered Trademark
- Litigation
- Federal Trademark
- Amazon's Brand Registry
- Privacy
- Medical Cannabis Dispensaries
- Logos
- Drug Enforcement Agency
- Uniform Trade Secrets Act
- E-Discovery
- E-Discovery Case Law
- Regulation Fair Disclosure
- Securities Law
- Securities Regulation
- Evidence
Recent Posts
- Generic.com Terms Are Not Per Se Generic
- EU Trademarks Post-Brexit: Now What?
- Don’t end up on The Elf on the Shelf’s naughty list!
- Stay Out of Trouble With the Federal Trade Commission
- "Aloha Poke": Social Media and Consumer Perception are Part of the Trademark Enforcement Equation
- Could Any Old Yahoo Nab Chief Wahoo?
- Trademark Registration Practice is Officially…umm…Well, You’ll See
- Booze is Booze, Right? Not so fast...
- Did A Neural Network Just Solve Craft Brewing's Trademark Problems?
- Enroll in Amazon’s Brand Registry 2.0… But Only if You Own a Registered Trademark