dailycaller
Kevin Daley
Legal Affairs Reporter
11:10 AM 06/19/2017
[excerpt]
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/19/supreme-court-axes-law-banning-disparaging-trademarks/The Supreme Court struck down a federal law banning the registration of disparaging trademarks Monday, finding the law violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause.
The ruling, written by Justice Samuel Alito, says that trademarks are private, not government speech, and that the government may not curtail even offensive expression.
“Holding that the registration of a trademark converts the mark into government speech would constitute a huge and dangerous extension of the government-speech doctrine, for other systems of government registration (such as copyright) could easily be characterized in the same way,” Alito wrote.
