A clothing line called FUCT may soon be added to the patent office's trademark registry
ERIK BRUNETTI , the proprietor of a streetwear brand called FUCT, says the name is an acronym for “Friends U Can’t Trust”. The United States Patent and Trademark Office saw it rather differently. FUCT, it said, was “highly offensive” and “vulgar” with “decidedly negative sexual connotations”. Pointing to a provision in the Lanham Act that bars the registration of “immoral or scandalous” marks, the agency declined to bless the brand name.
But three members of the court—Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor and John Roberts, the chief—opted to read “scandalous” more narrowly. In an opinion partially concurring with and partially dissenting from Justice Kagan’s ruling, Justice Sotomayor warned the decision “will beget unfortunate results”. The PTO will no longer have any basis for turning down marks “containing the most vulgar, profane, or obscene words and images imaginable”.
All the justices seem to agree that Congress can write a new law targeting flat-out profanity or vulgarity as long as only modes of expression—not ideas themselves—are cabined. But as Justice Samuel Alito wrote, the justices “are not legislators and cannot substitute a new statute for the one now in force” on their own.
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