The current standards for denying and cancelling trademarks under section 2(a) of the Lanham Act are insufficiently clear to prevent trademark examiners and administrative judges from employing viewpoint‐based discrimination against owners of marks that are perceived to be immoral, scandalous, or disparaging. Since trademark protection is a grant of speech rights to mark owners, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (PTO) discretionary decisions to deny or cancel the registration of marks that represent particular viewpoints under section 2(a) are at odds with the First Amendment protections afforded to both commercial and expressive speech. This Comment proposes that to protect the First Amendment rights of mark owners, the PTO should employ a policy that all allegedly immoral, scandalous, or disparaging marks are presumptively valid and can be denied registration or cancelled only upon a showing that the proposed marks are within the specific categories of speech deemed to be outside the realm of First Amendment protection. Stricter standards for denying and cancelling trademarks under section 2(a) will allow the commercial marketplace and the marketplace of ideas to determine the fate of these so‐called “undesirable” trademarks.
Part I introduces Lanham Act section 2(a), the statute authorizing the denial of registration for trademarks that are immoral, scandalous, or disparaging. I discuss the PTO’s procedures for granting and denying trademarks, and compare the PTO’s purported procedures with how the office actually makes decisions. I then argue that this process is infused with discretionary decisionmaking that allows examiners to incorporate their own opinions on the propriety of marks into the section 2(a) analysis. In Part II, I analyze the PTO’s rates of granting and denying registration to allegedly scandalous and disparaging trademarks under section 2(a) and the evidence used to support such decisions. In Part III, I assess the effects of trademark denial and cancellation on mark owners. In Part IV, I discuss the First Amendment doctrine of viewpoint discrimination, its interaction with the doctrines of commercial speech and administrative discretion, and how it applies to trademark registration and the PTO. I conclude that section 2(a) is a restriction on viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment. In Part V, I analyze how the discretionary procedures in the PTO lead to viewpoint discrimination. Finally, in Part VI, I propose changes to the section 2(a) regime to limit discrimination on the basis of viewpoint. I argue that the PTO should adopt the presumption that potentially scandalous and disparaging trademarks are valid absent section 2(a) challenges from third parties in opposition or cancellation proceedings. I also propose that section 2(a) denials should be limited to traditionally unprotected categories of speech, allowing the marketplaces of commerce and ideas to limit the propagation of trademarks that are seen as scandalous or disparaging.