On June 24, 2019, the United States Supreme Court struck down
the Lanham Act's ban on the registration of immoral or
scandalous trademarks as a violation of the First Amendment.
Trademark owner and Los Angeles clothing designer Erik Brunetti
filed an application to register the mark FUCT, which he represents
is an acronym for "Friends U Can't Trust"
and "is pronounced as four letters, one after the other:
F-U-C-T." But others have read it as the "past participle
form of a well-known word of profanity."
The Trademark Office denied registration of the mark on the
ground that it was "highly offensive" and
"vulgar," thus violating the statutory ban on immoral or
scandalous marks. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board upheld the
decision. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed that
the term was immoral or scandalous, but found the prohibition
against registration of such marks to be an unconstitutional
violation of free speech rights. The Supreme Court
