{"id":230,"date":"2019-06-24T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T19:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=230"},"modified":"2023-12-15T21:57:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T21:57:18","slug":"trademark-act-provision-disallowing-registration-of-marks-that-are-immoral-or-scandalous-violates-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2019\/06\/24\/trademark-act-provision-disallowing-registration-of-marks-that-are-immoral-or-scandalous-violates-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Trademark Act provision disallowing registration of marks that are immoral or scandalous violates the first amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Supreme Court has held, in<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/18pdf\/18-302_e29g.pdf\" class=\"mtli_attachment mtli_pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Iancu v. Brunetti,<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 U.S. \u2014 (2019), that the Constitution prohibits statutory distinctions between commercial speech based on its &#8220;viewpoint.&#8221; The provision of the Trademark Act taht prohibits federal registration of marks that are &#8220;immoral or scandalous,&#8221; 15 U.S.C. \u00a71052(a) is thus unconstitutional. While several Justices would have interpreted the provision narrowly to outlaw speech based on its manner rather than its substance (for example, outlawing obscene, profane, or vulgar) and then upheld the constitutionality of the provision. The majority left it to Congress to try to adopt a narrower provision that would not distinguish between speech based on whether it is consistent with conventoinal morality. The end result is to allow Erik Brunetti to obtain trademark registration for his F-U-C-T line of clothing.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"taxonomy-category wp-block-post-terms\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/free-speech\/\" rel=\"tag\">Free Speech<\/a><span class=\"wp-block-post-terms__separator\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/trademarks\/\" rel=\"tag\">Trademarks<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court has held, inIancu v. Brunetti,\u00a0\u2014 U.S. \u2014 (2019), that the Constitution prohibits statutory distinctions between commercial speech based on its &#8220;viewpoint.&#8221; The provision of the Trademark Act taht prohibits federal registration of marks that are &#8220;immoral or scandalous,&#8221; 15 U.S.C. \u00a71052(a) is thus unconstitutional. While several Justices would have interpreted the provision narrowly to outlaw speech based on its manner rather than its substance (for example, outlawing obscene, profane, or vulgar) and then upheld the constitutionality of the provision. The majority left it to Congress to try to adopt a narrower provision that would not distinguish between speech based on whether it is consistent with conventoinal morality. The end result is to allow Erik Brunetti to obtain trademark registration for his F-U-C-T line of clothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech","category-trademarks"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}