Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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529US1

Unit: $U38

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212 WAL-MART STORES, INC. v. SAMARA BROTHERS, INC.

Opinion of the Court

petitioner manufactured and sold green-gold dry-cleaning
press pads. After respondent began selling pads of a simi-
lar color, petitioner brought suit under § 43(a), then added
a claim under § 32 after obtaining registration for the
color of its pads. We held that a color could be protected
as a trademark, but only upon a showing of secondary mean-
ing. Reasoning by analogy to the Abercrombie & Fitch test
developed for word marks, we noted that a product’s color is
unlike a “fanciful,” “arbitrary,” or “suggestive” mark, since
it does not “almost automatically tell a customer that [it]
refer[s] to a brand,” 514 U. S., at 162–163, and does not
“immediately . . . signal a brand or a product ‘source,’ ” id.,
at 163. However, we noted that, “over time, customers
may come to treat a particular color on a product or its
packaging .
Ibid. Because a
color, like a “descriptive” word mark, could eventually “come
to indicate a product’s origin,” we concluded that it could be
protected upon a showing of secondary meaning.

. as signifying a brand.”

Ibid.

.

It seems to us that design, like color, is not inherently
distinctive. The attribution of inherent distinctiveness to
certain categories of word marks and product packaging
derives from the fact that the very purpose of attaching a
particular word to a product, or encasing it in a distinctive
packaging, is most often to identify the source of the product.
Although the words and packaging can serve subsidiary
functions—a suggestive word mark (such as “Tide” for laun-
dry detergent), for instance, may invoke positive connota-
tions in the consumer’s mind, and a garish form of packaging
(such as Tide’s squat, brightly decorated plastic bottles for
its liquid laundry detergent) may attract an otherwise indif-
ferent consumer’s attention on a crowded store shelf—their
predominant function remains source identiﬁcation. Con-
sumers are therefore predisposed to regard those symbols
as indication of the producer, which is why such symbols
“almost automatically tell a customer that they refer to a
brand,” id., at 162–163, and “immediately . . . signal a brand