Gregory J. Krabacher, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Columbus office, authored an article in ILN IP Insider, titled “Searching for Civility in U.S. Trademarks.”
Following is an excerpt:
After more than a hundred years of settled U.S. trademark policy, an interesting problem has developed for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). How to square the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions striking down parts of the federal Lanham Act with the USPTO’s historical rejection of immoral, scandalous, or disparaging trademarks? Whether by coincidence or not, the timing is also interesting. “The coming rush to register such trademarks—and the Government’s immediate powerlessness to say no” is coming at a time when civility in our public discourse is at a low ebb.
Interesting problems call for interesting solutions. This article examines the USPTO’s recent partial success involving the rejection of a trademark application for one particular profane word. Not just any profane word, however. Here we are dealing with the word described as “the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word!” Following our review of the recent U.S. precedent, we examine the potential broader implications on USPTO policy and compare this with that of other jurisdictions around the world.
