SCOTUS: Trademark “Tacking” A Question For Juries

In what Baker Donselson called the Supreme Court’s “first substantive trademark opinion in a decade,” it ruled that a jury should decide whether two legal trademarks are “legal equivalents” that can be “tacked” together to maintain rights. Two financial institutions with similar names are at the heart of the trademark case, in which one fought to be able to “tack,” or maintain its date of first use even though it changed its mark slightly over time. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court on the issue of whether tacking questions should be decided by judges or juries. As this is a fact-intensive inquiry, the Court reasoned, juries should decide.