Naming something or creating a phrase is inherently expressive. I don't see why that should be viewed differently because you may have the sole "right" to use a mark or phrase in a specific commercial context. Trademarks don't foreclose counter-speech.
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Supreme Court upholds offensive trademarks as form of free speech
- Thread starter Vice
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Naming something or creating a phrase is inherently expressive. I don't see why that should be viewed differently because you may have the sole "right" to use a mark or phrase in a specific commercial context. Trademarks don't foreclose counter-speech.
ShemhazaiX
Member
Ok but what about NWA?
elrechazado
Banned
Yep. This one was an easy one. Glad to see a unanimous court. Especially because i generally don't trust alito on first amendment issues.
Raven117
Member
Not always, but sometimes the justice that is the least "on board" is asked to write the decision to make it as focused as possible.
Half our society supports Trump.
VendettaRed07
Member
Yes. If this case was upheld then there would be standing to strike down that trademark as well
Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by counter-speech, your position seems to imply that it has value only in adversarial contexts. I don't think many people will agree with you on that. I also don't think giving your product the same name as a competing product is a great example of valuable counter-speech. No one is stopping you from saying that Redskins is a shitty name for a football team. You can write that on your commercially available T-shirt.
Edit: As TS-08 alludes, I think most people believe that allowing expression has value, full-stop, no further contingencies required.
Not even close
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