Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-704_4246.pdf
Page Number: 13

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

be liable for fraud if he passed the medicine off as that of 
Thomson.  Ibid. 

In a similar vein, the first reported trademark case in fed-
eral court revolved around a trademark’s content.  Justice 
Story,  sitting  as  Circuit  Justice,  granted  an  injunction  to 
prohibit a seller of spools from infringing on the plaintiff ’s 
trademark of “Taylor’s Persian Thread.”  Taylor v. Carpen-
ter,  3  Story  458  (D.  Mass.  1844).  Justice  Story  explained
that, by using the trademark, the seller “imitated . . . both 
descriptions of spools and labels, red and black, of the plain-
tiffs,” and that the principles prohibiting such infringement
were at that time “very familiar to the profession” and not
“susceptible of any judicial doubt.”  Id., at 464. 

Recorded trademark law began to take off in the last dec-
ades of the 19th century—after the ratification of the Four-
teenth  Amendment  in  1868—and  its  established  content-
based nature continued.  See Schechter 134; Pattishall, Two 
Hundred Years, at 133.  American commerce became more 
national  in  character,  and,  perhaps  because  of  this  shift, 
Congress enacted the first federal trademark law in 1870.
Although  States  retained  their  important  role,  “Congress
stepped  in  to  provide  a  degree  of  national  uniformity”  for 
trademark protection.  Tam, 582 U. S., at 224 (citing Act of 
July 8, 1870, §§77–84, 16 Stat. 210–212).3 

This  first  law  contained  prohibitions  on  what  could  be
protected as a trademark.  For example, the law would not 
protect a trademark that contained “merely the name of a 
person . . . only, unaccompanied by a mark sufficient to dis-
tinguish  it  from  the  same  name  when  used  by  other  per-
sons.”  Id.,  at  211.  It  thus  restricted  a  trademark  based 

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3 This  first  federal  trademark  law  “provided  for  the  registration  of 
trademarks generally without regard to whether they were used in in-
terstate or foreign commerce.”  1 McCarthy §5:3, at 188.  This Court held 
that  the  law  exceeded  Congress’s  power  under  the  Commerce  Clause. 
See Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U. S. 82, 99 (1879).  The law drew no chal-
lenge under the First Amendment.