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ABITRON AUSTRIA GMBH v. HETRONIC INT’L, INC. 

JACKSON, J., concurring 

to  cause  confusion,  or  to  cause  mistake,  or  to  deceive.’ ” 
B&B  Hardware,  Inc.  v.  Hargis  Industries,  Inc.,  575  U. S. 
138, 144 (2015).

Critically,  the  Act  defines  “ ‘use  in  commerce’ ”  as  “the
bona  fide  use  of  a  mark  in  the  ordinary  course  of  trade.” 
§1127.  And, in light of the core source-identifying function 
of marks, Congress’s statutory scheme embodies a distinc-
tion between trademark uses (use of a symbol or equivalent 
“ ‘to  identify  or  brand  [a  defendant’s]  goods  or  services’ ”) 
and  “ ‘non-trademark  uses’ ”  (use  of  a  symbol—even  the 
same one—“ in a ‘non-source-identifying way’ ”).  Jack Dan-
iel’s,  599  U. S.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at  13).    This  all  points  to
something key about what it means to use a trademark in 
the sense Congress prohibited—i.e., in a way likely to com-
mit  the  “cardinal  sin”  of  “confus[ing]  consumers  about
source.”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 14). 

Simply  put,  a  “use  in  commerce”  does  not  cease  at  the 
place the mark is first affixed, or where the item to which 
it is affixed is first sold.  Rather, it can occur wherever the 
mark serves its source-identifying function.  So, even after 
a trademark begins to be “use[d] in commerce” (say, when
goods on which it is placed are sold), that trademark is also
“use[d] in commerce” wherever and whenever those goods
are  in  commerce,  because  as  long  as  they  are,  the  trade-
mark “identif[ies] and distinguish[es] . . . the source of the 
goods.”  §1127.  Such a use is not free-floating; the trade-
mark is being used by the “person” who put that trademark
on the goods “to identify and distinguish” them in commerce 
and “indicate the[ir] source.”  Ibid.  This is the “use in com-
merce” to which §1114(1)(a) and §1125(a)(1) refer.

Because it is “use in commerce”—as Congress has defined
it—that “provides the dividing line between foreign and do-
mestic  applications  of ”  these  provisions,  ante,  at  14,  the 
permissible-domestic-application 
inquiry  ought  to  be 
straightforward.  If a marked good is in domestic commerce, 
and the mark is serving a source-identifying function in the