Supreme Court Docket Report - June 23, 2014

Keywords: Supreme Court, trademark tracking, Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act

Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in two cases of interest to the business community:

• Trademark Tacking—Question of Fact or Question of Law
• Nondelegation Doctrine—Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act

Trademark Tacking—Question of Fact or Question of Law

To have a protected interest in a trademark, a party must be the first to use it. The party that first uses the mark is said to have "priority," and the date of the mark's first use is its "priority date." Because the first use of a trademark is critical to determining ownership, courts have recognized a doctrine called trademark "tacking" to permit the owner of a trademark to make minor changes to the mark without losing priority. The test for trademark tacking, which courts routinely characterize as a narrow doctrine, is whether the old mark and the new mark are "legal equivalents." If