Federal Circuit Questions TTAB’s Refusal to Register the F-Word

The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s decision affirming an examining attorney’s refusal to register the word “FUCK” as a trademark in In re Brunetti, No. 2023-1539 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 26, 2025). The Federal Circuit agreed with most of the TTAB’s reasoning in rejecting Brunetti’s arguments but held that the TTAB’s opinion lacked sufficient clarity to support its decision to reject Brunetti’s application.

A few years ago Brunetti successfully fought for registration of the mark FUCT at the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court, striking down the Lanham Act’s bar on registration of immoral and scandalous matter in the process. While that dispute was pending before the Supreme Court, Brunetti filed four more intent-to-use trademark applications in 2019 for the word “FUCK,” covering various goods such as sunglasses, jewelry, and bags, and retail store services. The USPTO examining attorney refused the application because the word is a commonplace word that did not serve to indicate the source of the applicant’s goods and/or services. The TTAB affirmed the rejection.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit found that the TTAB’s decision to affirm the examining attorney’s rejection was unsupported. Specifically, the Court highlighted the increasing number of failure-to-function refusals at the TTAB and found that the TTAB’s decision did not make clear what factors or circumstances could contribute to a commonplace word (such as LOVE) being regarded by the public as a source indicator, while the word FUCK, according to the TTAB, could not. The Federal Circuit urged the TTAB, on remand, to establish guidelines for determining whether and when a commonplace word can be registered as a mark.