The intersection of free speech and private business branding is once again in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. On June 5th, the Supreme Court decided to hear Vidal v. Elster, Case 22-704, an appeal from the...more
The Supreme Court ruled last week that a college board’s censure of a trustee did not violate the First Amendment. David Wilson was an elected member of the Board of Trustees of the Houston Community College (HCC) System...more
What do you suppose the Supreme Court might tell a politician who filed a lawsuit complaining that other politicians said mean things about him? You might think the Court would say, “Toughen up, Buttercup!” Well, yesterday,...more
At a Glance - Even though the Supreme Court has paved the way for brands to register trademarks that may be considered disparaging, immoral, or scandalous, brand owners are reversing themselves and voluntarily changing....more
1. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) provided guidance on the propriety of mail or manual ballot elections. Aspirus Keweenaw, 370 NLRB No. 45 (Nov. 9, 2020). In this case, the NLRB set forth the considerations...more
What constitutes a “scandalous” trademark? The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been grappling with this question since the enactment of the 1905 Trademark Act, later codified in the 1946 Lanham...more
Suppose that you want to register a trademark that identifies a source of goods or services for your business. What if the trademark is immoral or scandalous? Should you register your scandalous trademark with the U.S....more
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument in Iancu v. Brunetti regarding the constitutionality of the portion of Lanham Act, Section 2(a) (15 U.S.C. § 1052(a)) that prohibits the United...more
On April 15, 2019, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether dirty words and vulgar terms may be registrable as trademarks – and if so, what is the test? Section 2(a) of the Trademark Act currently provides that the...more
The constitutionality of yet another portion of Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act will soon be determined. Following in the footsteps of the blockbuster decision in Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017) (“Tam”), the U.S. Supreme...more
U.S. trademark attorneys received a New Year’s surprise last month when the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear Iancu v. Brunetti, the case that should determine the availability of federal trademark...more
The Supreme Court of the United States granted the US Patent and Trademark Office’s (PTO’s) request that it address whether the prohibition of federal trademark protection for “immoral” or “scandalous” marks is invalid under...more
Just over a year ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that a century-old ban prohibiting the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) from registering “scandalous” and “immoral” trademarks...more
On January 4, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari filed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in Iancu v. Brunetti. The USPTO seeks to overturn the Federal Circuit’s ruling that the prohibition on...more
On January 4, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the United States Patent and Trademark Office's ("USPTO") appeal of In re Brunetti, 877 F.3d 1330 (Fed. Cir. 2017). In taking this case, it appears...more
On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear a case that will decide whether the federal ban on trademark protection for “scandalous” material is unconstitutional. In re Brunetti follows the U.S. Patent...more
This blog has followed the evolving judicial views concerning disparaging trademarks, culminating in the Supreme Court’s decision in in Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (June 19, 2017)....more
On Friday, while some of us may have been muttering a few bad words as we slogged through our post-holiday inboxes, the Supreme Court was toying with a naughty word of its own: FUCT. That’s right. Late last week the Court...more
A recent decision from the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals offers a key reminder for public agencies: Even within a nonpublic forum, an individual’s and/or community’s Constitutionally protected freedom of speech cannot...more
The First Amendment protects an organization that wants to run ads with images of alleged terrorists on public buses, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit has ruled, reversing a Washington federal court judge....more
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit has ruled that Seattle violated the First Amendment by banning “disparaging” ads on city buses....more
A county violated the First Amendment by refusing to display an advertisement related to global terrorism on its public buses, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held....more
The Ninth Circuit extended the First Amendment protections enunciated by the Supreme Court in Matal v. Tam, 137 S.Ct. 1744 (2017) to advertising in American Freedom Defense Initiative, et al. v. King County (9th Cir. Sept....more
Just when we thought the unconstitutionality of the ban on disparaging and scandalous trademarks had been resolved, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) is shaking things up....more
The landmark case, Matal v. Tam, forever altered the innocence of the trademark landscape. The case, interestingly enough, involved a musical group wanting to trademark a seemingly disparaging mark. ...more