Court Opinion

ID: 9478171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:42:18.860677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:17.125272
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the TTAB decision should be affirmed, and with most of what the court well says. There is one matter, however, as to which I do not wholly agree, much as I respect the court’s expertise in this field.
We have an unfortunate tendency to believe we must always utter the last word and lay down the ultimate law on all the subjects confided to us. Here we have a TTAB decision with which we find nothing wrong, and two previous TTAB decisions dealing with the same general subject. That is, all three are concerned with the Lanham Act provision barring from registration, trademarks which are “deceptive,” and in all three the alleged deception was words making it appear that material actually of synthetic fibers was natural. The task consisted of applying one word in a statute to the few words or single word of a trademark, in light of the actual composition as acknowledged by the applicant. Lawyers are ostensibly, and I hope often actually, trained to construe statutes and other written words according to the intent of those who utter them and the understanding of those who read them. The task in the three cases was one for lawyers, and the three opinions afford internal evidence that the TTAB suffers no shortage of those who know how to do it well. They do not need us to tell them how to do it. If we do so, we clamp down a rigid formula for them to conform to, with a prospect of their being harried by lawyers for alleged nonconformity to the formula forever thereafter, with the simple ultimate issue forgotten.
No one can tell what future cases will bring or whether our formula will aid the solution of future cases, or hinder it. In re Simmons, Inc., one of our three cases, well illustrates my point. The mark: “White Sable” for paint brush bristles, is construed in light of the fact that the animal, sable, is extremely dark and that is so well known that “sable” as an adjective, serves as a synonym for black, as in “sable plumage.” As the white sable is a fictitious animal, the mark “white sable” cannot deceptively represent that the hairs in the brush came from a real animal. Who could prescribe beforehand how to deal with such a case? To deal with it after it arose, by an unhampered board, was no trick at all.
In the case before us, the board asked itself: “is anyone likely to believe the product is made of lamb or sheepskin?” The question might, perhaps ideally, be “is any reasonable person * * * ” because unreasonable persons are likely to believe anything. It is clearly what the board meant. This court transforms that question in its formula to this:
*778If so, are prospective purchasers likely to believe that the misdescription actually describes the goods?
Thus “anyone,” a single individual, is transmuted into a class of persons. I readily can picture the fun future counsel will have with this. They can demand that the board, with its limited investigative facilities as we acknowledge, first define who are the prospective purchasers, old, young, Ph.D’s, illiterates, etc.? Then, what are their tastes, their intellectual quirks, their degree of gullibility?
A simple issue, mostly or wholly of law, is transmuted into a wide-ranging factual inquiry. Is the board to indulge in guesswork and speculation as to this suppositi-tious class, and its mores? We reprehended this approach in a recent “likelihood of confusion” case, Amalgamated v. Amalgamated, 842 F.2d 1270, 6 USPQ2d 1305 (Fed.Cir.1988); (cf. B.V.D. Licensing Corp. v. Body Action Design, Inc., 846 F.2d 727, 6 USPQ2d 1719 (Fed.Cir.1988)). Is it to conduct a sweeping inquest, the process known outside the Beltway as “making a federal case out of it.” Far better, it seems to me, is not to fix anything when nothing is broke.