Webinar: Give Speech a Chance: Using the First Amendment in Trademark Prosecution and Litigation by Alt Legal Community

| Eastern Time (US & Canada) (GMT -4:00)

About This Webinar

With its decisions in Tam and Brunetti, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that the First Amendment has real force in trademark law. The Court struck down prohibitions on registering marks deemed disparaging, scandalous, or immoral. Yet in Vidal v. Elster, the Court upheld the ban on registering another living person’s name or likeness without consent, signaling that some content-based trademark laws will survive constitutional scrutiny. In this webinar, University of San Diego Law Professor Lisa Ramsey talks about which trademark registration bars may be vulnerable to First Amendment challenges, and why denying registration of words and symbols that convey product information or express ideas is consistent with the free speech right. Topics will include:
* The Court’s framework for evaluating free speech challenges to trademark laws
* Why the Court may find trademark dilution law unconstitutional
* The reasons why failure to function doctrine is consistent with the First Amendment

Everyone who’s registered for this webinar will receive an email with a link to the recording.

This webinar is pending CLE approval for 1 hour in 60-minute states and up to 1.2 hours in 50-minute states. For more information about CLE credit for Alt Legal events, including whether your state qualifies, check out this page: https://www.altlegal.com/cle-information/

Lisa Ramsey

Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law

Lisa Ramsey is a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she teaches and writes in the intellectual property law area. She is an expert on trademark law and has given presentations on this topic to attorneys, professors, and students throughout the United States and around the world. Professor Ramsey’s scholarship focuses on potential conflicts between trademark laws and free speech rights, and explains how trademark protection of certain inherently valuable words, symbols, and product features can harm fair competition and freedom of expression. Her book about this topic “Trademarks and Free Speech: Conflicts and Resolutions” will be published by Cambridge University Press in January 2026. In 2024, she testified at a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Intellectual Property Subcommittee about the First Amendment implications of a proposed anti-impersonation law targeted at unauthorized digital replicas called the No FAKES Act. She has also talked about free speech limits on trademark rights on panels at San Diego Comic-Con in 2023 and 2024. Professor Ramsey is an active member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and worked on the subcommittee that updated the International Trademark Association’s Model Trademark Law Guidelines in 2019. Before joining the USD law faculty in 2004, she was an intellectual property litigator at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich and a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Rebecca Beach Smith in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Information about her publications is available on her website at www.lisapramsey.com.