Dirty Dirty Dallas · 214 · By the culture, for the culture
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Know The Law · Commentary
"Dallas" is two different things: a place that belongs to everyone who lives and builds in it, and a municipal corporation that provides civil services. U.S. trademark law treats those two very differently — and understanding that difference is understanding this whole fight.
Under Section 2(e) of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. §1052(e)), a mark that is "primarily geographically descriptive" of goods cannot be registered on the Principal Register. A place name isn't ownable by default — it's shared by every business operating there. The only way to earn trademark rights in one is acquired distinctiveness (§2(f)): years of real commerce that make the public associate the mark with your goods. That's what a brand does by selling hats for a decade. It is not what a government does by printing letterhead.
Section 2(b) (15 U.S.C. §1052(b)) goes further: a mark consisting of the "flag or coat of arms or other insignia of the United States, or of any State or municipality" is flatly barred from federal registration. Here's the irony — the more "official city insignia" a logo is, the less registrable it is. A municipality's official mark is, by design, the public's mark. Nobody gets to register it — including the municipality.
Now imagine — hypothetically — how that ambiguity could be played. "The City of Dallas" names both the legal entity and the geography. A clever litigant could gather evidence that people associate a mark with Dallas the place — the culture, the pride, the 214 — and articulate it as confusion with Dallas the government. Quietly, "The City" stops meaning a municipal corporation with trucks and utility bills, and starts meaning the place itself. The definition broadens; the claim broadens with it.
Accept that logic once and the precedent is set: a municipality can assert ownership of its place name in commercial categories it never traded in — sports, apparel, culture. Every taco shop, ball club, barbershop, and streetwear brand named for its own hometown becomes a potential infringer-by-default, operating at the pleasure of City Hall. Geographic identity — the thing trademark law deliberately left unownable so commerce could share it — becomes government property. That's not brand protection. That's enclosure of the commons.
This is educational commentary reflecting Triple D Gear's perspective on matters in active litigation — it is not legal advice. Triple D Gear is an independent Dallas brand, not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the City of Dallas or Southern Methodist University.
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