4th Circuit Remands NAACP Trademark Lawsuit Against Radiance Foundation to District Court

“National Association for the Abortion of Colored People” in an anti-abortion column, vacating and remanding U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson’s original June 2014 decision in the case. Jackson had ruled in Norfolk, Virginia, that the Radiance Foundation’s use of the NAACP acronym constituted trademark infringement. The 4th Circuit said the NAACP’s interpretation of trademark law “would push the Lanham Act close against a First Amendment wall, which is incompatible with the statute’s purpose and stretches the text beyond its breaking point. We decline to reach so far.” Allowing an “in connection” element “to suck in speech on political and social issues through some strained or tangential association with a commercial or transactional activity” would be dangerous, the 4th Circuit said. “Courts have uniformly understood that imposing liability under the Lanham Act for such speech is rife with the First Amendment problems.” Radiance applauded the ruling, saying in a statement that “the NAACP tried to crush our right to free speech but truth and justice prevailed.” The NAACP didn’t immediately comment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation praised the decision Tuesday, with Legal Fellow Jamie Williams saying in a blog post that the 4th Circuit “recognized that trademark protection ‘comes at a potential cost to free expression’ and found that trademark law should be read narrowly in cases involving non-commercial speech.”