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Page Number: 14.0

10 

VIDAL v. ELSTER 

Opinion of the Court 

upon  its  content  (i.e.,  whether  it  contained  more  than  a 
name).  As trademark disputes increased, courts continued
to assess trademarks based on their content.  For example, 
this Court’s first trademark decision explained that a trade-
mark cannot consist of a purely geographical name, reject-
ing an attempt by one of several coal producers in Pennsyl-
vania’s  Lackawanna  Valley  to  trademark  “Lackawanna 
coal.”  Canal  Co.  v.  Clark,  13  Wall.  311,  321  (1872).
Throughout its development, trademark law has required 
content-based distinctions. 

That did not change when Congress enacted the Lanham
Act  in  1946.  The  Act’s  comprehensive  system  for  federal
registration  of  trademarks  continues  to  distinguish  based 
on  a  mark’s  content.    See  Restatement  (Third)  of  Unfair
Competition  §9,  Comment  e  (1993)  (Restatement)  (“The 
Lanham Act is generally declarative of existing law, incor-
porating the principal features of common law trademark
protection”).  The Act defines a trademark to include “any
word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof ” 
that  a  person  uses  “to  identify  and  distinguish  his  or  her 
goods . . . from those manufactured or sold by others and to 
indicate the source of the goods.”  §1127.  When the Govern-
ment defines what may be registered as a trademark, it nec-
essarily decides that some words or images cannot be used
in a mark.  To take one example, the Lanham Act bars the 
registration of “a mark which so resembles [another’s] mark 
. . . as to be likely . . . to cause confusion, or to cause mis-
take, or to deceive.”  §1052(d).  It is impossible to determine
whether one trademark is the same as (or confusingly sim-
ilar  to)  another  without  looking  at  the  content  of  the  two
marks. 

This  history,  reflected  in  the  Lanham  Act  still  today, 
demonstrates that restrictions on trademarks have always
turned on a mark’s content.  But, despite its content-based
nature,  trademark  law  has  existed  alongside  the  First