Iancu v. Brunetti On June 24, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that section 1052(a) of the Trademark Act barring registration of marks that are scandalous or immoral to be invalid under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The PTO refused to register Brunetti’s FUCT clothing mark and he challenged the statute. Historically, the USPTO applied section 1052(a) by asking whether a “substantial composite of the general public” would find the mark to be “shocking to the sense of truth, decency, or propriety.” The Supreme Court found the PTO’s application to be content discrimination, violating the bedrock of the First Amendment, which is that the government cannot discriminate against “ideas that offend.” Finding that the facial viewpoint bias of section 1052(a) results in viewpoint-discriminatory application, the majority opinion found the statute unconstitutional in its entirely because the government must be “viewpoint-neutral” to survive First Speech Clause review.