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Page Number: 22.0

18 

MATAL v. TAM 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of ALITO, J. 

could easily be characterized in the same way. 

Perhaps the most worrisome implication of the Govern-
ment’s  argument  concerns  the  system  of  copyright  regis-
tration.  If  federal  registration  makes  a  trademark  gov-
ernment speech and thus eliminates all First Amendment 
protection,  would  the  registration  of  the  copyright  for  a 
book produce a similar transformation?   See 808 F. 3d, at 
1346  (explaining  that  if  trademark  registration  amounts
to government speech, “then copyright registration” which
“has  identical  accoutrements”  would  “likewise  amount  to 
government speech”). 

The  Government  attempts  to  distinguish  copyright  on
the ground that it is “ ‘the engine of free expression,’ ” Brief 
for  Petitioner  47  (quoting  Eldred  v.  Ashcroft,  537  U. S. 
186,  219  (2003)),  but  as  this  case  illustrates,  trademarks
often have an expressive content.  Companies spend huge
amounts to create and publicize trademarks that convey a 
message.  It  is  true  that  the  necessary  brevity  of  trade-
marks  limits  what  they  can  say.  But  powerful  messages
can sometimes be conveyed in just a few words. 

Trademarks are private, not government, speech. 

B 
We  next  address  the  Government’s  argument  that  this
case  is  governed  by  cases  in  which  this  Court  has  upheld 
the  constitutionality  of  government  programs  that  subsi-
dized  speech  expressing  a  particular  viewpoint.  These 
cases  implicate  a  notoriously  tricky  question  of  constitu-
tional law.  “[W]e have held that the Government ‘may not 
deny  a  benefit  to  a  person  on  a  basis  that  infringes  his
constitutionally protected . . . freedom of speech even if he
has  no  entitlement  to  that  benefit.’ ”    Agency  for  Int’l  De-
velopment v. Alliance for Open Society Int’l, Inc., 570 U. S. 
___,  ___  (2013)  (slip  op.,  at  8)  (some  internal  quotation 
marks omitted).  But at the same time, government is not
required  to  subsidize  activities  that  it  does  not  wish  to