About a quarter century ago, Steve Baird — at the time, a freshly minted graduate of the University of Iowa law school clerking for a federal judge in Washington, D.C. — was spending most of his free weekends working on an article exploring a provision of federal trademark law. For a young lawyer, the topic — Section 2 (a) of the Lanham Act — was an attractive subject for research, mainly, Baird said, because no one had written much about it yet.

Focusing on the statute’s ban on “scandalous” and “immoral” trademarks, Baird kept plugging away on the article after he wrapped up his clerkship and came to the Twin Cities to take a job at Dorsey & Whitney.

Originally published in Minnesota Lawyer on May 25, 2015.