Artist and clothing brand owner Erik Brunetti has this week accused the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of unfairly denying his trademark application out of spite. The office had previously refused to register FUCT, the name of Brunetti’s streetwear brand, on the grounds that it was ‘scandalous’ and therefore in breach of the federal government’s prohibition on immoral and scandalous trademarks. Brunetti then challenged the decision, leading him all the way to the US Supreme Court back in 2019, where it was ruled that bans on scandalous and immoral trademarks, violated the first amendment’s protections for free speech. The court emphasised that deciding whether trademarks are “immoral” means discriminating “on the basis of viewpoint.”

The USPTO have since informed Brunetti that, while those original grounds for refusal no longer exist, the word FUCT is such a “widely used commonplace word” that consumers will not perceive it as a trademark.  He claims that these grounds only arose after the Supreme Court ruling and that UPSTO essentially invented them in retaliation.

“The PTO so hates Brunetti that the PTO is advancing legal contentions that undermine basic trademark law,” Brunetti claims in a filing in the ongoing appeal. He urged the Federal Circuit not to ignore the PTO’s failure to explain why only Brunetti’s applications were denied when other commonly used words and phrases such as love and indeed, variations of the F-word, have been granted to other applicants. Further, he claims that that when the Supreme Court ruled in his favour in 2019, the justices understood that FUCT would be registered.

FUCT was founded by Brunetti back in 1990 and with origins in skateboard culture, is widely acknowledged as one of the first streetwear brands. Standing for “Friends U Can’t Trust”, the brand was a pillar of 1990s counterculture that saw a collaboration with the Beastie Boys as well as campaigns shot with photographer Larry Clark. While the brand had always been subject to knockoffs, the explosion of online retail saw an uptick in counterfeits and in 2011 the brand filed for a federal trademark. Thirteen years later, Brunetti’s battle to protect his brand continues on.

Image via FUCT.com