Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 286.0

529US1

Unit: $U38

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 205 (2000)

211

Opinion of the Court

ently distinctive. See Abercrombie & Fitch Co. v. Hunting
World, Inc., 537 F. 2d 4, 10–11 (CA2 1976). Second, a mark
has acquired distinctiveness, even if it is not inherently dis-
tinctive, if it has developed secondary meaning, which occurs
when, “in the minds of the public, the primary signiﬁcance
of a [mark] is to identify the source of the product rather
than the product itself.”
Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives
Laboratories, Inc., 456 U. S. 844, 851, n. 11 (1982).*

The judicial differentiation between marks that are inher-
ently distinctive and those that have developed secondary
meaning has solid foundation in the statute itself. Section 2
requires that registration be granted to any trademark “by
which the goods of the applicant may be distinguished from
the goods of others”—subject to various limited exceptions.
15 U. S. C. § 1052.
It also provides, again with limited ex-
ceptions, that “nothing in this chapter shall prevent the reg-
istration of a mark used by the applicant which has become
distinctive of the applicant’s goods in commerce”—that is,
which is not inherently distinctive but has become so only
through secondary meaning. § 2(f), 15 U. S. C. § 1052(f).
Nothing in § 2, however, demands the conclusion that every
category of mark necessarily includes some marks “by which
the goods of the applicant may be distinguished from the
goods of others” without secondary meaning—that in every
category some marks are inherently distinctive.

Indeed, with respect to at least one category of mark—
colors—we have held that no mark can ever be inherently
In Qualitex,
distinctive. See Qualitex, supra, at 162–163.

*The phrase “secondary meaning” originally arose in the context of
word marks, where it served to distinguish the source-identifying meaning
from the ordinary, or “primary,” meaning of the word.
“Secondary mean-
ing” has since come to refer to the acquired, source-identifying meaning
It is often a misnomer in that context, since
of a nonword mark as well.
nonword marks ordinarily have no “primary” meaning. Clarity might
well be served by using the term “acquired meaning” in both the word-
mark and the nonword-mark contexts—but in this opinion we follow what
has become the conventional terminology.