# Search and Persuasion in Trademark Law

**Authors:** Barton Beebe
**Citation:** "Search and Persuasion in Trademark Law," 103 *Michigan Law Review* 2020 (2005)

**Abstract:** Conceptualizes search sophistication and persuasion sophistication, two distinct forms of consumer sophistication. Meaning of trademark distinctiveness; Concept of search sophistication; Relation between trademark distinctiveness and persuasion.
**Source:** http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1577&context=mlr

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and celebrity attention,4 but it is the trademark cases that most clearly express the unsteady state, the entre deux temps condition, of current American intellectual property law. There is a reason for this. Trademark law is arguably the most difficult of the intellectual property laws to contemplate, and its outcomes when applied to facts are the most difficult to predict. This is because it requires a form of what John Keats called "negative capability,"5 the capability, more specifically, to think through the consumer and see the marketplace only as the consumer sees it.6

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From the beginning, trademark law has sought to resist the negative capability called for by its underlying idealism. It has sought to limit the dependence of the object of the law, the trademark, on the vagaries of the subject of the law, the consumer. In doing so, the law has embraced an "ideal type"7 of the subject. Just as copyright doctrine has based itself upon a largely mythical "author construct,"8 so trademark doctrine has based itself upon a largely mythical "consumer construct. "9 Where the former describes an impossibly romantic producer, however, the latter describes an impossibly utilitarian consumer. Both figures are conceived of as sovereigns, that is to say, as egoists, but where the "sovereign author" is inspired, even capricious in her egoism, the "sovereign consumer" is a utility maximizing agent of unbounded rational choice.10 By means of "a mechanical procedure of search,"11 which trademarks are said to facilitate, she satisfies exogenously determined preferences, on which trademarks are said to have no effect. Her psychology is understood to be predictable, administrable, and ultimately ameliorative. The sovereign consumer is the antithesis of and eliminates the need for negative capability.

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Trademark law remains firmly rooted in the concept of the sovereign consumer notwithstanding a long tradition of dissent and reaction within trademark commentary, and the recent upsurge, more generally, of the behavioral tradition in economics and now in law.12 For at least the half century since Ralph Brown's Advertising and the Public Interest, 13 restrictionist trademark commentary has charged, often quite comically, that the consumer is not so much the sovereign as the fool, the "Pavlovian"14 stooge of the advertising industry.

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see Mark A. Lemley, Romantic Authorship and the Rhetoric of Property, 75 TEX. L. REV. 873 (1997) (reviewing BOYLE, supra and criticizing the authorship hypothesis). 9. On the relation between the author construct in copyright law and the "authornyrn" construct in trademark law, see Laura A. Heymann, The Birth of the Authornym: Authorship, Pseudonymity, and Tra demark Law, 80 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1377REV. (2005)) 11. Donald McCloskey & Arjo Klamer, One Quarter of GDP ls Persuasion, 85 AM. ECON. REV., May 1994May , at 191, 191 (1995)). On the dichotomy between copyright's romantic author and trademark's utilitarian consumer, consider COLIN CAMPBELL, THE ROMANTIC ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF MODERN CONSUMERISM 36-57 (1989). 13. Ralph S. Brown, Jr., Advertising and the Public Interest: Legal Protection of Trade Sy mbols, 57 YALE L.J. 1165, 1182 (1948) ("The classical economists who enthroned the consumer never dreamed that he would make his decisions under a bombardment of stupefying symbols.").

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Restrictionists have sought thereby to dethrone the sovereign in trademark as others have sought the "death of the author" in copyright.15 Trademark apologists, primarily scholar-practitioners or academics of the law and economics tradition, have countered that the consumer is not nearly so gullible. Two decades ago, in Trademark Law: An Economic Perspective,16 William Landes and Richard Posner dismissed "the power of brand advertising to bamboozle the public and thereby promote monopoly." 1 7 Citing "economics," 1 8 Landes and Posner argued that consumers rely on trademarks as informational devices and nothing more. This debate has also played out in appellate case law. Judges of the Seventh Circuit typically remain committed to the concept of the sovereign. 1 9 Judges of the Second20 and Ninth Circuits21 have, on occasion, been especially solicitous of the fool. 18. Id. ("The short answer to these arguments is that they have gained no foothold at all in trademark law, as distinct from antitrust law .... A longer answer, which we shall merely sketch, is that the hostile view of brand advertising has been largely and we think correctly rejected by economists."). In the revised book-chapter version of the article, this passage does not appear. See LANDES & POSNER, ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, supra note 16, at 173-74. 19. See, e.g. , W.T. Rogers Co. v. Keane, 778 F.2d 334, 338 (7th Cir. 1985) ("The purpose [of trademark protection] is to reduce the cost of information to consumers by making it easy for them to identify the products or producers with which they have had either good experiences, so that they want to keep buying the product (or buying from the producer), or bad experiences, so that they want to avoid the product or the producer in the future.").

## For example, Judge Hand explained:

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Champagne is a wine especially cherished by those who seek to impress their associates with their opulence and munificence; to many its consumption is an envied mark of luxury and social importance. Those who covet a name for taste and elegance, do indeed affect discrimination in the recognition of various brands; but, especially as an evening wears on, the label, and only a very casual glance at the label, is quite enough to assure the host and his table that he remains as freehanded and careless of cost as when he began. At such stages of an entertainment noth ing will be easier than for an unscrupulous restaurant keeper to substitute the domestic champagne.

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G.H. Mumm Champagne v. E. Wine Corp., 142 F.2d 499, 501 (2d Cir. 1944) (Hand, J.); see also Smith v. Chanel, Inc., 402 F.2d 562, 567 (2d Cir. 1968) (discussing the possibility that "economically irrational elements are introduced into consumer choices" by brand advertising). 21. See, e.g., Int'! Order of Job's Daughters v. Lindeburg & Co., 633 F.2d 912, 918 (9th Cir. 1980) (recognizing that "[w]e commonly identify ourselves by displaying emblems expressing allegiances. Our jewelry, clothing, and cars are emblazoned with inscriptions showing the organizations we belong to, the schools we attend, the landmarks we have visited, the sports teams we support, the beverages we imbibe"); Stork Restaurant v. Sahati, August 2005] Search and Persuasion 2025 I do not intend in what follows to take sides in this debate -though it must be said that recent research in neuroscience threatens to expose the neoclassical orthodoxy as essentially frivolous.22 Rather, my purpose here is to expose and analyze the inconsistent uses that have been made of the sovereign and the fool in trademark advocacy and adjudication. The sovereign consumer has proven to be a double agent in the commentary and the case law. He serves one master, namely, the trademark apologist, in theoretical disputes over the basis of trademark protection and another, the restrictionist, in disputes over the scope of that protection. The rational consumer may justify the protection of trademarks for their informational content, but, in his perspicacity, he also justifies a narrow scope of protection as against other similar marks. The consumer as fool is a similarly double-edged construct. His susceptibility to the persuasive content of trademarks undermines the basis of trademark protection, but his lack of discernment also recommends a wide scope of protection when protection is given. The result is that trademark apologists -and plaintiffs -tend to adduce the sovereign when they speak of the basis of protection and the fool when they speak of the scope. Trademark restrictionists -and defendants -do the reverse. They adduce the fool when they speak of the basis, and the sovereign when they speak of the scope. Both camps thus suffer from, at the same time that they seek to exploit, what amounts to a dialectic in trademark theory, in which information and persuasion each contain within themselves the countervailing force of the other.

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These tensions persist unrecognized in the commentary and continue to muddle outcomes in the courts because trademark law lacks a well-developed theory of the consumer and, specifically, of consumer sophistication. This Article seeks to move beyond these contradictions by drawing on economic and social science literature to conceptualize two distinct forms of consumer sophistication: "search sophistication," which describes the consumer's capacity during search to distinguish between similar trademark uses, and "persuasion sophistication," which describes the consumer's capacity during search or otherwise to resist the persuasive appeal of trademark distinctiveness. While search sophistication thus bears upon the 166 F.2d 348, 359 (9th Cir. 1948) ("It may well be true that a prudent and worldly-wise passerby would not be so deceived. The law, however, protects not only the intelligent, the experienced, and the astute. It safeguards from deception also the ignorant, the inexperienced, and the gullible."). likelihood of consumer confusion in search, persuasion sophistication bears upon the likelihood of consumer delusion in preference formation.

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Part II prepares the ground by analyzing the workings of the most ambiguous and also the most important concept in all of trademark doctrine: distinctiveness. Part III sets out the concept of search sophistication and shows how commentators and litigants seek to profit by it. Part IV considers the relation between trademark distinctiveness and persuasion and introduces into trademark commentary the notion of persuasion sophistication. The Part then shows how the concept is manipulated in the commentary and the case law. Having considered apologist and restrictionist positions on search sophistication in isolation from their positions on persuasion sophistication, I consider, in Part V, each school's positions together. My concern is to analyze not the antitheses between the schools, but the antitheses within them. These are shown to be analogous to tensions within Left and Right critiques of consumption and consumer society more generally. The Part then proposes a simple, if partial, explanation for the historic expansion of trademark scope. Trademark producers compete to assume the search costs of consumers, for in doing so, they also garner the means of persuasion. Because trademark law remains an essentially descriptive rather than prescriptive enterprise, the law has done little more than subserve this expansionary trend. As currently expounded, trademark law possesses no normative inertia of its own, no inbuilt rationale other than to do whatever it does more efficiently. The result, as Part VI concludes, has been the rise of the "sovereign trademark."

## II. THE M EANING OF T RADEMARK D ISTINCTIVENESS

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In the trademark literature, courts and commentators routinely invoke without discussion the concept of distinctiveness,23 yet it has never been altogether clear what is meant by the term. The Lanham Act's definition, to the extent it provides one, is essentially circular,24 as is the Supreme Court's.25 The leading circuit split in trademark law, Reading these two sections together, we are left to infer that to the extent that it is the mark's "distinctive quality" that is diluted, then distinctivenes describes the mark's "capacity ... to identify and distinguish goods or services." 25. Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 U.S. 763, 769 (1992) ("The general rule regarding distinctiveness is clear: An identifying mark is distinctive and capable of being over the issue of whether a mark must be inherently distinctive in order to qualify for federal antidilution protection under Section 43( c) of the Act, is essentially a split over the meaning of the term "distinctive" in that section.26 A recently proposed amendment to Section 43( c) promises to resolve this split, but also threatens to create a new one, now by defining "dilution by blurring" as an "association" between defendant's and plaintiff's mark that "impairs the distinctiveness" of the latter. 27 What it means to "impair ... distinctiveness" is nowhere specified. The few circuit court opinions that have sought to analyze the concept have only complicated matters further. 28 Meanwhile, the dominant law and economic account of trademark law, otherwise totalizing in its ambition, steers clear of any discussion of the term. Distinctiveness, that "crucial trademark concept,"29 is as close as the doctrine comes to an "inarticulate sound."30

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In an effort to bring order to the concept, I have elsewhere offered a lengthy analysis of trademark distinctiveness from the perspective of protected if it either (1) is inherently distinctive or (2) has acquired distinctiveness through secondary meaning.").

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Compare TCPIP Holding Co. v. Haar Communications, Inc., 244 F.3d 88, 98 (2d Cir. 2001) ("[W)eak, non-distinctive, descriptive marks do not qualify for the [FTDA]'s protection, even if famous"), and Nabisco, Inc. v. PF Brands, Inc., 191 F.3d 208, 216 (2d Cir. 1999) ("It is quite clear that the statute intends distinctiveness, in addition to fame as an essential element."), with Times Mirror Magazines, Inc. v. Las Vegas Sports News, L.L.C., 212 F.3d 157, 166-67 (3d Cir. 2000) (analyzing the degree of acquired distinctiveness of a non-inherently distinctive mark to determine whether the mark qualifies for protection under the FTDA), Avery Dennison Corp. v. Sumpton, 189 F.3d 868, 877 (9th Cir. 1999) (same), and l.P. Lund Trading ApS v. Kohler Co., 163 F.3d 27, 45 (1st Cir. 1998) ("[T]he [FTDA) applies to a famous 'mark' and does not restrict the definition of that term to names or traditional marks. In the absence of such a restriction, the Act applies to all types of marks recognized by the Lanham Act, including marks derived from product designs."). 27. On February 9, 2005, Rep. Lamar Smith, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property ("CIIP"), introduced the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2005 ("TDRA"). H.R. 683, 109th Cong. ( 2005), available at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_ bills&docid=f:h683rfs.txt.pdf (Apr. 20, 2005). The TDRA, which is expected to pass, will amend Section 43(c) of the Lanham Act to provide antidilution protection to "the owner of a famous mark that is distinctive, inherently or through acquired distinctiveness." Id. § 2. 170 F.3d 449 (4th Cir. 1999), the Fourth Circuit spoke of a mark's "'distinctiveness' as such, in the narrow sense of its singularity as a word symbol," id. at 459, as opposed to its "selling power." Id. at 456. In contrast, Judge Bright's dissent in Anheuser-Busch Inc. v. Stroh Brewery Co. , 750 F.2d 631 (8th Cir. 1984) distinguishes between a mark's "distinctiveness," on the one hand, and its "source-designating capacity," on the other. Id. at 648 (Bright, J., dissenting). semiotic and linguistic theory.31 I will happily spare the reader such an analysis here. To explain the relation between trademark distinctiveness and commercial information and persuasion, however, I must briefly review some of the doctrinal implications of that analysis. The most important of these is that distinctiveness is merely a general term which trademark lawyers have long used to refer indiscriminately -and apparently unwittingly -to one or the other of two very different species of distinctiveness. The first is source distinctiveness, which a trademark must possess to fall within the subject matter of trademark protection. The second and more important is differential distinctiveness, the extent of which prescribes the scope of trademark protection when protection is given. This is the form of distinctiveness that trademark lawyers have in mind when they speak of trademark "strength." The difference between these two forms of distinctiveness is crucial, not only for purposes of properly understanding and applying trademark doctrine but also for purposes of understanding how it is that trademarks generate and trademark law regulates persuasion.

## A. Distinctiveness as Source Distinctiveness

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The problem with the concept of trademark distinctiveness begins with the Lanham Act's definition of the trademark: "The term 'trademark' includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof ... used by a person ... to identify and distinguish his or her goods ... from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the source of the goods .... "32 This definition conflates two very different functions of the trademark: first, to indicate the source of goods, which has very little to do with persuasion, and second, to distinguish those goods from others' goods, which has everything to do with persuasion.33 I consider here for the moment the first, and increasingly obsolete, 34 function of the trademark.

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To receive protection, a trademark must be distinctive of source. We say that a trademark is distinctive of source if it is recognized by consumers as a designation of the source of the product to which it is 31. ("A loud reminder needs to come from the top that without a clear differentiating idea attached to a brand, all you're left with to motivate buyers is price. But your competitors can cut prices, too, so without strong branding, prices will fall, as will profits."). affixed rather than as, say, a decoration on or a description of that product. Certain trademarks are inherently source distinctive, typically those which bear no semantic relation to the product to which they are affixed. As a matter of consumer literacy, when we see the word "camel" printed on a pack of cigarettes or the image of a once-bitten apple affixed to the side of a computer, we make sense of these signs as designations of source. We need not be told that they are trademarks. They explain themselves. 35 Such inherently source distinctive marks qualify for federal trademark protection from the moment they are used in commerce.

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Not all trademarks are inherently source distinctive, however. When first seen, many marks may be understood to be descriptive or decorative of the products to which they are affixed -e.g., AMERICAN AIRLINES, NBA, three stripes on the side of athletic shoes. Nevertheless, consumers recognize them as trademarks because, over time, they have acquired source distinctiveness. While their primary, literal meaning may be descriptive or decorative, their "secondary," figurative meaning to consumers is that they denote source or origin.36 Otherwise descriptive or decorative insignia acquire "secondary meaning" as source-identifiers through commercial use and promotion, and upon acquiring such secondary meaning, qualify for trademark protection.

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When we speak of trademark distinctiveness in this context, then, we are speaking of the semantic meaning of the mark, its semiotic "signification." A mark is distinctive of a source in the sense that it functions to refer to or indicate a source.37

## B. Distinctiveness as Differential Distinctiveness or Strength

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As perceived by a given consumer, a trademark either is or is not source distinctive; it either qualifies for protection or it does not. The difference between the mark which is source distinctive and the mark which is not is a difference of kind, not degree. 38 Nevertheless, 35. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF UNFAIR COMPETITION § 13 cmt. b (1995) ("Certain designations by their nature are likely to be perceived by prospective purchasers as symbols of identification that indicate an association with a particular source. These designations are 'inherently distinctive. "').

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36. See Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 U.S. 763, 769 (1992) ("Marks which are merely descriptive of a product are not inherently distinctive. When used to describe a product, they do not inherently identify a particular source, and hence cannot be protected. However, descriptive marks may acquire the distinctiveness which will allow them to be protected under the [Lanham] Act. ... This acquired distinctiveness is generally called 'secondary meaning. "'). trademark lawyers regularly speak of one trademark as being "more distinctive" or "stronger" than another. They do not mean by this that one mark "means" more than another. This makes no more sense than suggesting that my name refers to me more than my colleague's name refers to her. Rather, when trademark lawyers speak of comparative distinctiveness or strength, they are speaking of a mark's distinctiveness from other marks -a name is distinctive of a person, but it is also more or less distinctive from other names. In addition to conveying distinctiveness of source, a trademark also conveys, in the language of marketing, "brand differentiation"39 or, as I am calling it here for reasons specific to trademark doctrine, "differential distinctiveness." In short, a mark not only signifies or stands for something; it also sets that something more or less apart.

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Differential distinctiveness refers, then, to the uniqueness or singularity of the mark, to the degree to which it stands out from the crowd of competing signs in the marketplace, to its "salience. "40 Trademark law has traditionally held, perhaps incorrectly,41 that marks which are inherently source distinctive possess an inbuilt degree of differential distinctiveness; inherently source distinctive marks are said to be inherently strong (a good example is YAHOO!, a bad example is SCANTICON). Inherently source distinctive marks acquire further differential distinctiveness in the same way that noninherently source distinctive marks acquire both source distinctiveness and differential distinctiveness: through commercial use and promotion. 42 Be they inherently distinctive of source or not, trademarks ultimately set Id.

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Recognize that these (poles corresponding to 'possesses secondary meaning' and 'does not possess secondary meaning'] are the only two states that exist in a lay consumer's mind. Unless they are trademar k attorneys, consumers care not whether something is arbitrary, fanciful, suggestive, descriptive or generic. Their cognitive networks simply tell them that the combination of features in the external environment either does or does not signify an item that they associate with a particular source. themselves apart as distinctive fr om other commercial signs through the acquisition of "fame"43 and connotation in the marketplace.

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When we speak of distinctiveness in this context, we are not speaking of reference, of the equation of a sign with a meaning, of a mark with a source. Rather, we are speaking of difference, of semiotic "value," of the opposition of one sign as against all other signs in a sign system.44 Differential distinctiveness and source distinctiveness are closely related, but they are not the same.45 For example, a mark that is highly distinctive from other marks (e.g., YAHOO!, NIKE) will also likely have achieved wide recognition as a designation of source, but a mark that is widely recognized as a designation of source (e.g., ACME, SUMMIT) may not be particularly distinctive from other marks. It is thus not correct to define trademark distinctiveness, as many courts do, as simply "the degree to which [the mark] indicates the source or origin of the product."46 To do so conflates the issue of whether or not the mark indicates source with the issue of the degree to which the mark is distinctive from other marks in the marketplace. It conflates a distinction of kind with a distinction of degree.

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To explain one important practical implication of the difference between these two forms of distinctiveness, I turn now to a consideration of the workings of trademark scope.

## C. Trademark Distinctiveness and Trademark Scope

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In a trademark infringement inquiry, we apply the apparatus of trademark doctrine to determine the answer to two overriding questions: first, is plaintiff's mark worthy of protection, and if so, second, does defendant's mark infringe plaintiff's mark? To determine whether the plaintiff's mark is worthy of protection, we ask whether or not it is perceived by consumers as a designation of source. If we find that it is, we then ask to what extent it is perceived by those consumers as distinctive from other marks, as salient in the marketplace. The reason we do so is that stronger, more differentially distinctive marks are given a wider scope of protection than weaker, less distinctive 43. For purposes of trademark law, "fame" describes the degree of renown or notoriety of the mark in the marketplace. 45. A consideration of speech act theory did not seem necessary in this paper; in fact, it seemed counterproductive. Even so, one is tempted to draw parallels between, on the one hand, the difficulty trademark law has experienced in distinguishing source distinctiveness from differential distinctiveness, and, on the other, the difficulty J.L. Austin experienced in distinguishing locution from illocution. marks.47 Trademark law, and the marketing literature with it, has long recognized that the more distinctive a trademark is from other marks, the greater is consumers' "awareness" 48 of it and the more immediately "accessible"49 it is in their memory. If a new mark appears that is similar to a preexisting and otherwise highly accessible mark, consumers are more likely to mistake that new mark for the mark they already know, i.e., to perceive the two marks as identical (which I will call "identity confusion").50 This problem is exacerbated by consumers' tendency to devote less attention to the process of search when they are searching for what they consider to be a familiar brand.51 Alternatively, having successfully distinguished the new mark from the old, consumers may nevertheless infer incorrectly that, in light of their similarities, the two marks originate from and designate the same source (which I will call "inferential confusion"). 52 For example, a consumer may correctly perceive that a highly distinctive mark such as AMERICAN AIRLINES is not identical to a similar mark such as AMERICAN AIRWAYS, but may nevertheless incorrectly assume, in light of the strength of the former, that the latter is a spin off brand. It is thus the very strength of the mark that is traditionally understood to conduce to identity or inferential confusion.53

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In order to understand trademark law's characteristically regressive principle that greater strength entails greater protection, one thing must be kept clearly in mind: increases in the differential distinctiveness of a mark must not be understood to result in increases in consumer sophistication as to that mark. Courts have occasionally reasoned that the strength of the mark sensitizes consumers to any difference between the strong mark and a mark similar to it and have on this basis proposed that strong marks deserve comparatively less protection than weak marks.54 The thinking is that consumers are so 53. See, e.g. , Champions Golf Club, Inc. v. Champions Golf Club, Inc., 78 F.3d 1111, 1117 (6th Cir. 1996) ("The stronger the mark, the more likely it is that encroachment on it will produce confusion."); James Burrough, Ltd. v. Sign of Beefeater, Inc., 540 F.2d 266, 276 (7th Cir. 1976) ("What is intended by references to 'strong' and 'weak' marks is the effect of such marks upon the mind of the consuming public. A mark that is strong because of its fame or its uniqueness, is more likely to be remembered and more likely to be associated in the public mind with a greater breadth of products or services, than is a mark that is weak because relatively unknown or very like similar marks or very like the name of the product."); see also RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF UNFAIR COMPETITION § 21 cmt. i (1995) ("The greater the distinctiveness of the mark, the greater the likelihood that prospective purchasers will associate the same or a similar designation found on other goods, services, or businesses with the prior user."). 54. See, for example, Kenner Parker Toys Inc. v. Rose Art Indus., Inc., 963 F.2d 350, 353 (Fed. Cir. 1992), in which the Federal Circuit reversed the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board's dismissal of an opposition filed by Kenner Parker, the owner of the trademark PLAY-DOH, against the registration of the mark FUNDOUGH. In reversing, the court wrote:

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The Board erred in discounting the import of Kenner's famous prior mark. The Board acknowledged "the renown of opposer's mark with respect to modeling compound." Indeed, Rose Art conceded this fame. Yet the Board treated that fame as a liability in assessing likelihood of confusion. Reasoning that consumers might more easily recognize variances from a famous mark, the Board concluded that the fame of Kenner's mark permitted greater, rather than less, legal tolerance for similar marks.

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While scholars might debate as a factual proposition whether fame heightens or dulls the public's awareness of variances in marks, the legal proposition is beyond debate. The driving designs and origins of the Lanham Act demand the standard consistently applied by this court -namely, more protection against confusion for famous marks.

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Id. Similarly, in Merriam-Webster, Inc. v. Random House, Inc., 35 F.3d 65, 71 (2d Cir. 1994), the Second Circuit, finding no trademark infringement, explained:

*p. 15*
The fatal flaw in Merriam-Webster's case is the unstated (for obvious reasons) premise that the "bull's-eye" logo and the very name Merriam-Webster are neither strong nor distinctive. The jury, of course, found to the contrary, and there is ample evidence of Merriam Webster's consistent promotion of the "bull's-eye" logo and its name on a variety of reference works. Unless the circular "bull's-eye", which dominates the front cover and is [Vol. 103:2020 aware of very strong brands that they will detect even the slightest variation in the appearance of the brand (GUCCI and, say, GUCCII), thus avoiding identity confusion,55 and recognize any unauthorized extension of the brand (GUCCI handbags and, say, GUCCI motor oil), thus avoiding inferential confusion. This reasoning, which occasionally still appears in European case law,56 represents a fundamental threat to the trademark industries, however, if not to the whole edifice of trademark doctrine, and has remained a decidedly minority view both here and abroad.57 More commonly, the relation between differential distinctiveness and the scope of protection is understood to be mutually reinforcing, if not ratchet-like. Increased differential distinctiveness results in an increased scope of protection, and that inqeased scope of protection acts to preserve increased differential distinctiveness. All the while, such increases in strength, the doctrine displayed on six other works depicted on the back, and the name "Merriam-Webster," which is used once on the front and on the spine and numerous times on the back, are regarded as such insignificant features that confusion with an angular drawing of a house and the name "Random House" can exist, the jackets are not confusingly similar. There is a greater likelihood of confusion with very distinctive marks (SABEL, Canon, Lloyd Schuhfabrik Meyer). This is a very surprising proposition (and perhaps only a presumption of fact, since this cannot be a legal issue), since normally it is easier to distinguish a well-known word mark from others close to it. But it seems to me to make more sense when one comes to consider device marks. I have difficulty understanding how it can affect the similarity of goods, but that is the law. Id.

## As reported by Seiko Hidaka, et al., A Sign of the

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[A]t the interlocutory stage in MontBlanc, it was argued that the very reputation of the claimant's mark prevented the likelihood of confusion, on the basis that consumers would view the defendant's goods as cheap imitations of the claimant's goods without ever being deceived but this argument was rej ected on appeal.

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57. After all, on this reasoning, strength and scope would work at cross-purposes: if more strength entailed less protection, that lesser protection would result, through encroachments by new marks, in diminished strength. This diminished strength might then justify more protection.

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insists, have no appreciable effect on search sophistication, a concept to which I now turn in earnest.

## III. SEARCH SOPHISTICATION AND TRADEMARK SCOPE

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It is an irony of trademark law that the trademark plaintiff is often placed in the awkward position of arguing that its customers are ignorant and its goods commonplace, while the defendant begs to differ. The parties do so because the scope of protection the law will afford to a trademark is inversely related to the law's estimation of the relative sophistication of the consumers of the goods to which that trademark is affixed: more consumer sophistication results in a lesser scope of trademark protection; less sophistication, in a greater scope of protection. In this Part, I explain this inverse relation and show how it plays out in litigation and the commentary.

## A. Search Sophistication and the Search Sophistication Curve

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For purposes of trademark law, consumer "sophistication" refers to the consumer's capacity during search to distinguish between similar trademark uses (i.e., to avoid identity confusion), and furthermore, to recognize that such uses designate different sources (i.e., to avoid inferential confusion). Social science research has identified a wide variety of factors that may affect a consumer's search sophistication, 58 such as age, 59 gender, 60 education level, 61 cognitive style,62 and experience with the trademarked product and product 58. In determining the likelihood of consumer confusion and thus of trademark infringement in any given case, trademark law typically compares the search sophistication of the relevant consumer population -i.e., the specific population of consumers exposed to the plaintiff's and defendant's marks -to the search sophistication of the consumer population generally. The distribution of consumer sophistication across the general population is implicitly understood to form a bell curve: some consumers are highly sophisticated (e.g., professional buyers of industrial parts65), some are not (e.g., American wine consumers, or so found the Northern District of California,66 the poor, or so found the Southern District of New York67), and most fall somewhere in between. The mean of this curve defines the reasonably sophisticated •consumer. If the defendant's product is an expensive or specialty good, then the putative degree of care of the relevant Decision-Making Styles as a Fu nction of Individual Learning Styles, 24 J. CONSUMER AFF AIRS 134 (1990) (demonstrating the relation between individual learning styles and consumer decision-making styles).

*p. 18*
See, e.g. , Ellen R. Foxman, et al., An Investigation of Fa ctors Contributing to Consumer Brand Confusion, 24 J. CONSUMER AFF. 170, 174 (1990) ("The more familiar consumers are with the various brand offerings within a product class, the more likely they will be able to make distinctions among brands, thereby reducing likelihood of confusion.").

*p. 18*
See, e.g., Astra Pharm. Prods., Inc. v. Beckman Instruments, Inc., 718 F.2d 1201, 1206 (1st Cir. 1983) (concurrent use of trademark ASTRA on medical equipment not confusing because "[t]he decision to buy a machine worth thousands of dollars is obviously not done on an impulse, and involves a careful consideration of the reliability and dependability of the manufacturer and seller of the product"); Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Human Performance Measurement Inc., 23 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA)1390, 1396 (T.T.A.B. 1991) (professional buyers of medical instruments not likely to be confused between trademarks HP and HPM because "[b]uyers of the parties' goods, as well as potential customers for the products, plainly are highly educated, sophisticated purchasers who know their equipment needs and would be expected to exercise a great deal of care in its selection").

*p. 18*
66. E. & J. Gallo Winery v. Consorzio de! Gallo Nero, 782 F. Supp. 457, 464-65 (N.D. Cal. 1991). 67. Schieffelin & Co. v. Jack Co., 850 F. Supp. 232, 250 (S.D.N.Y. 1994) (stating, "Even if some of the prospective purchasers of DOM PERIGNON are from low income groups, and are therefore less sophisticated shoppers than wealthier purchasers, ... "). A later court took exception to the Shieffelin court's assumption. See Reebok Int'! Ltd. v. K-Mart Corp., 849 F. Supp. 252, 268 n.18 (S.D.N.Y. 1994) ("[T]he court expressly disagrees with this statement's implication that there is a direct relationship between income and consumer intelligence. Careless shopping habits are not a necessary by-product of a low income.").

*p. 19*
consumer population is typically raised above the mean.68 The inverse is true as well, particularly as to "impulse" goods.69

*p. 19*
Trademark doctrine also conceives of a spectrum of sophistication within the relevant consumer population itself, a spectrum which tends to take the form of a bell curve as well. The law rarely confronts a situation where the entire relevant consumer population is confused, nor does the law seek to disabuse all relevant consumers of confusion when it enjoins a defendant's confusing use.70 Rather, as stated above, it enjoins a competing use only when an appreciable proportion of relevant consumers are confused. 71 Some consumers within the relevant population are typically seen as beyond help.72 Even so, courts have found infringement where as little as 15%,73 or even 8.5% ,74 of the relevant consumer population is confused.75 Consumer populations with a high degree of search sophistication do not require -or justify -the ceding of as expansive a scope of protection to a given trademark use as do consumer populations with a low degree of search sophistication.76 As Landes and Posner have argued,77 this is essentially a matter of comparative information costs. In cases involving professional buyers, for example, courts typically limit the scope of protection they afford to the plaintiff, sometimes so severely as to allow even near-identical competing marks.78 This likely reflects the court's implicit judgment that as between the producers of competing marks and professional buyers, the buyers are the lower cost avoiders of confusion, i.e. , their information costs are lower than those of the producers.79 More common, however, are cases where the court assumes a very low degree of search sophistication -"recent ... cases have shown a willingness to believe in an astonishingly stupid consumer," writes Professor Dreyfuss80 -with the effect that the plaintiff's scope of protection balloons out to exclude even quite dissimilar competing trademarks. In these cases, it is the producers of the competing marks that are understood to be the lower-cost avoiders of confusion. 1992) ("Generally, the more sophisticated and careful the average consumer of a product is, the less likely it is that similarities in trade dress or trade marks will result in confusion concerning the source or sponsorship of the product."). 77. See Landes & Posner, Trademark Law, supra note 16, at 302 ("(T]he inputs into the sale of a product include information supplied by buyers as well as by sellers. The cheaper the buyer-produced information is -perhaps because the consumers of a particular product are particularly knowledgeable, such as business purchasers of a supply essential to their business -the less information the seller must supply, such as making more effort to distinguish the trademark from a competitor's."). Consumer Search Sophistication

*p. 21*
Populations with a relatively low degree of search sophistication, x1, require the ceding of a relatively broad scope of protection, y1' to plaintiff's trademark. Consumers with a relatively high degree of search sophistication, x2, allow the provision to plaintiff's trademark of a relatively narrow scope, y2• In a situation of high search sophistication and broad rights, at a point such as D above the curve, confusion is avoided, but at unnecessary cost. The owner's broader than-optimal scope represents a loss to the public domain or to competitors without any offsetting efficiency or informational gains. In a situation of low search sophistication and narrow rights, at a point such as E below the curve, confusion is likely to occur. Either consumers must become more sophisticated, or, as is more likely, the scope of protection must be broadened.

## B. Self-Positioning on the Search Sophistication Curve

*p. 21*
Opposing parties in trademark infringement litigation typically take opposing views on the sophistication of the relevant consumer population. Plaintiffs tend to argue that the relevant population possesses a relatively low degree c of search sophistication. 81 The 81. See, e.g., Malletier v. Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp., No. 04Civ.2644, 2004 WL 1161167, at *6 (S.D.N.Y. May 24, 2004) (plaintiff Louis Vuitton, a high-end manufacturer of hand bags, argues that the relevant consumer population is not so sophisticated as not to be confused, while defendant Burlington Coat Factory, a discount retail chain, argues that the population is highly sophisticated); Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. v. Profile Cocktail Lounge, Inc., No. 99 C 5377, 2001 WL 123787, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 13, plaintiff thereby attempts to move as high as possible on the search sophistication curve in the hope that its trademark's scope of protection will expand to encompasses defendant's trademark, thus necessitating an injunction. By arguing for the relatively high search sophistication of the relevant consumer population, the defendant attempts conversely to move down the search sophistication curve. It does so in the hope that its trademark will eventually fall outside of the plaintiff's trademark's shrinking scope of protection. A fine example of both sides of this practice is found in the curious litigation strategy of Ty, Inc., the manufacturer of Beanie Babies and a frequent trademark litigant in the Northern District of Illinois. Ty has argued, as a plaintiff, that its consumers are unsophisticated and thus easily confused82 and, as a defendant, that its consumers are sophisticated and thus not easily confused. 83 The Northern District was not amused. 84 However, as Professor McCarthy has intimated, judges themselves are not above adjusting their finding of whether the relevant consumer population is sophisticated or unsophisticated to conform to the result they wish to achieve.85 This may especially be the case in misappropriation, tarnishment, or bad faith situations, where 2001) (manufacturer of high-end LEXUS automobiles argues that its brand has gone down market, specifically, that "Lexus has developed an extensive market for second-hand Lexus automobiles which are sold to the general public, not just to well-educated professionals," and thus that the relevant consumer population is not highly sophisticated). Compare Case T-117/02, Grupo El Prado Cervera, SL, v. OHIM, para. 30 (Ct. First Instance July 6, 2004), available at http://oami.eu.int/en/mark/aspects/pdf/JT002117.pdf (last visited May 24, 2005) (applicant arguing that the reference "average consumer" is "characterised by inattentive behaviour"), with id. para. 33 (defendant arguing that the reference consumer is "reasonably observant and circumspect"). Sept. 9, 1998) ("Ty, Inc. argues that ... Beanie Baby customers are sophisticated about the product and will not be confused and will exercise care when purchasing .... "). 84. See Ty, Inc. v. Agnes M. Ltd., No. 00 C 358, 2001 WL 1414210, at *11 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 9, 2001) (finding that Ty's efforts to distinguish cases in which it argued that its consumers were unsophisticated are not "persuasive enough to overcome the findings of previous courts on this issue"); Ty, Inc. v. Perryman, No. 99 C 8190, 2001 WL 826893, at *7 (N.D. Ill. July 17, 2001) (finding that, "[q]uite apart from having taken a contrary position on this issue in 1998," the evidence suggests that Ty's cm ;i sumers are highly sophisticated).

## McCarthy writes:

*p. 22*
In looking over the various judicial definitions, a cynic would say that the standard of care laid down varies with the result of the case. That is, when the court wants to find no infringement, it says that the average buyer is cautious and careful and would never be confused. But if the judge thinks there is infringement, the judge sets the standard lower and says the average buyer is gullible and not so discerning, and would be easily confused by the similar marks. MCCARTHY, supra note 43, § 23:92 .

## Search and Persuasion 2041

*p. 23*
the judge is forced to find confusion, however unlikely, in order to reach what she believes to be the right result.86 As in litigation, so in the commentary, restrictionists and apologists seek to move in opposing directions along the search sophistication curve. In an effort to constrict the scope of trademark protection, restrictionists typically seek to move down the curve. They assert that consumers are more sophisticated in search than the law generally credits them to be. Two decades ago, Professor Denicola expressed his dismay at the law's conception of a consumerate of "presumptive idiots" who are "apparently befuddled by nearly everything." 87 Professors Litman 2005) (observing that some courts, "apparently moved by sympathy for the trademark holder, nominally focus on a likelihood of confusion but stretch the facts or adopt unsupported assumptions to conclude that consumers, presuming an association between the trademark holder and goods bearing its mark, will be confused."). Such presumptive idiots are apparently befuddled by nearly everything, although one must wonder how prolonged a search would be required to identify a flesh and blood consumer who actually believes that the General Electric Corporation would manufacture or sponsor T-shirts on which the G.E. logo and the words "Genital Electric" appear, or who assumes that a coffe e mug proclaiming "I Love E.T." is necessarily connected with Universal City Studios, Incorporated.

*p. 23*
Id. (footnote omitted). 88. See Jessica Litman, Breakfa st with Batman: Th e Public Interest in the Advertising Age, 108 YALE L.J. 1717, 1722 (1999) ("Recently, we have seen a great deal of the extraordinarily gullible consumer."). 89. See Dreyfuss, supra note 80, at 154 ("[B]ecause consumers are actually habituated to ambiguity, the degree of confusion that consumers are actually likely to suffer is less than might otherwise be thought.").

## Bartow asks:

*p. 23*
Why, in trademark litigation decisions, do judges so often write about representative members of the public as if we are astoundingly naive, stunningly gullible, and frankly stupid? Do jurists truly believe that consumers are complete idiots? What is it about trademark law that seems to elicit from courts such offensive and humiliating views of the citizenry?

*p. 23*
Bartow, supra note 64, at 723; see also Stephen L. Carter, The Trouble with Tra demark, 99 YALE L.J. 759, 789 (1990) ("Consumers may be more sophisticated than the Landes and Posner model assumes."); Tom Moore, Striking a Balance in Trade Mark Protection, MANAGING lNTELL. PROP., May 2004, at 25, 26 ("The basis for claiming private ownership over a real word is often a condescending attitude toward the consumer. This kind of condescension is the source of many expansive claims to trade mark rights .... However, consumers are not that susceptible to confusion."). But see Austin, supra note 6, at 890 (counseling that "[i]t is important ... not to press too far the point that trademark's consumer does not seem particularly astute, given the risk that marginal cases might characterize the middle. Every case finding unlikely confusion to be actionable can be matched by cases where confusion that seems as likely was not actionable.").

*p. 24*
[Vol. 103:2020 made this point. Meanwhile, apologists argue the contrary, that the average consumer possesses a low degree of search sophistication.91 This is consistent with the apologist's commitment to maintain if not expand the scope of trademark protection by moving up the curve.

*p. 24*
It is unsurprising that the apologist-plaintiff should attempt to move up the curve (in order to expand scope) and the restrictionist defendant should attempt to move down it (in order to constrict scope). Yet each camp encounters in its own thinking countervailing pressures to move in the opposite direction. For example, at the same time that apologists move up the curve by arguing that consumers are generally not sophisticated in search, they base their justification for trademark rights on the model of the rational sovereign consumer. At some point moving left along the sophistication axis, a consumer may be understood to be so unsophisticated, so "befuddled," as to have abdicated any claim to rational sovereignty. The risk of crossing this divide tends to weigh on the apologist as she moves up the search sophistication curve. Meanwhile, restrictionists seek to move down the curve by arguing that consumers are generally competent users of trademarks as informational tools, but the restrictionists' recognition, however grudging, of the salutary function of trademarks is in significant tension with their overall suspicion of trademarks and the trademark system. This tension tends to pull the restrictionists back up the search sophistication curve.

*p. 24*
Strangely, then, neither side appears willing entirely to follow through on their position as to search sophistication, even if doing so might push them farther along the search sophistication curve towards the narrower or expanded scope of protection they seek. There is a reason for this, and it relates to an altogether different and unacknowledged curve in trademark thinking: the persuasion sophistication curve.

## IV. PERSUASION SOPHISTICATION AND TRADEMARK SCOPE

*p. 24*
It is well-accepted in the trademark literature that trademarks facilitate the process of search, and that strong marks facilitate that process more than weak marks. The more distinctive a trademark is from other trademarks, the less costly it is for consumers, be they 91. Landes and Posner, for example, state:

*p. 24*
Even if the firm that is using a trademark in one part of the country never expands to other parts, consumers are not fixed in one place, and in traveling around the country or in moving from one part of the country to another they may be confused if different brands of the same product are sold under the same name.

*p. 24*
Landes & Posner, Tra demark Law, supra note 16, at 284. Professor Carter questions whether consumers are so peripatetic as to be confused in this manner. See Carter, supra note 90, at 789. sophisticated or unsophisticated in search, to process that distinction.92 It is also less costly for consumers unaidedly to recall the mark. 93 In enhancing differential distinctiveness, the trademark producer thus internalizes some of the search costs of its consumers. 94 But differential distinctiveness arguably does more than simply inform. Trademark restrictionists have long asserted that it also persuades,95 and, in doing so, deludes, that at the same time that it reduces consumer confusion as to source, it also induces consumer delusion as to needs and/or wants. On this basis, restrictionists have argued, as a matter of policy, that the law should restrict the scope of trademark protection. Their hope is that doing so will limit the persuasive strength of trademarks. Apologists have responded to this argument, if they respond at all, with a certain degree of derision. They grant that trademarks have the capacity to persuade, or at least, that trademark producers seek through their brand strength to alter preferences, but assert that consumers are generally able to resist such persuasion, or are in any case not deluded. The debate has come to tum on a concept well-developed in the marketing literature, but never explicitly invoked or analyzed in the trademark literature: the concept of persuasion sophistication. I consider the workings of this concept here.

## A. Differential Distinctiveness and Persuasion

*p. 25*
In 1927, at a time when the technology of branding and advertising began truly to consolidate its power over the American mass market,96 the practitioner-scholar Frank Schechter wrote what remains the most 92. See Luk Warlop & Joseph W. Alba, Sincere Flattery: Trade-Dress Imitation and Consumer Choice, 14 J. CONSUMER PSYCHOL. 21, 21 (2004) ("Visual uniqueness of a brand enhances the speed with which it can be identified in crowded purchase environments and the accuracy with which it can be differentiated from its competitors."). See generally Steven M. Shugan, Th e Co st of Th inking, 7 J. CONSUMER RES. 99 (1980) (discussing information processing costs in the context of consumer decision making).

*p. 26*
influential work on American trademark law, The Rational Basis of Trademark Protection.97 In it, he argued that "the value of the modem trademark lies in its selling power" and that "this selling power depends for its psychological hold upon the public, not merely upon the merit of the goods upon which it is used, but equally upon its own uniqueness and singularity."98 As Schechter took great pains to emphasize, the mark's "selling power" originates not so much in the mark's meaning, its semantic content, but in the degree to which the mark "is actually unique and different from other marks."99 In a statement that was for the trademark bar of the time revolutionary, Schechter declared that "[t]he mark actually sells the goods. And, self evidently, the more distinctive the mark, the more effective is its selling power. "1 00

*p. 26*
Schechter was the first trademark commentator to take trademark distinctiveness seriously, to see it as more than merely a means of informing consumers of source. He recognized that the distinctiveness of the trademark, by which he meant its "uniqueness or individuality,"101 also generates persuasion, i.e., affects preferences, and that greater distinctiveness may have a greater persuasive effect. More essentially, he recognized what empirical work has since demonstrated: that consumers will pursue distinctiveness, even "meaningless differentiation,"102 for its own sake.103 Schechter's view Our results show that meaningless differentiation [i.e., differentiation on an irrelevant attribute J is valued by consumers in a surprising number of situations. For example, meaningless differentiation is valued even if the differentiated brand is priced above all others and, more surprisingly, in some cases increasing price actually can increase preference for the differentiated brand. Furthermore, the competitive advantage created by adding an irrelevant attribute can be sustained even if consumers acknowledge the differe ntiating attribute is irrelevant.

*p. 26*
Id. at 340. The authors note that "[o]ur results are somewhat disquieting for the model of rational choice." Id. at 348; see also Gregory S. Carpenter & Kent Nakamoto, Reflections on "Consumer Preference Formation and Pioneering Advantage '', 31 J. MARKETING RES. 570, 572 (1994) (suggesting that "[m]eaningless differentiation can also simplify consumer choice; it provides a simple way to distinguish between otherwise similar brands"). was taken up by many who came after him. Most famously, Justice Frankfurter wrote broadly of the trademark's "commercial magnetism":104

*p. 27*
A trade-mark is a merchandising short-cut which induces a purchaser to select what he wants, or what he has been led to believe he wants. The owner of a mark exploits this human propensity by making every effort to impregnate the atmosphere of the market with the drawing power of a congenial symbol. Whatever the means employed, the aim is the sameto convey through the mark, in the minds of potential customers, the desirability of the commodity upon which it appears. 1 05 This is the same view that led others to recognize trademarks as "but a species of advertising. " 1 06

*p. 27*
As a measure of Schechter's continued, if not expanded, influence, trademark law has proven willing in recent decades to protect differential distinctiveness precisely because it is seen to generate "selling power." The law has done so under the banner of antidilution protection, a form of protection that Schechter first proposed. Trademark dilution is thought to occur when a senior and a junior mark are identical or highly similar, but are nevertheless perceived to refer to two different sources (e.g., EBAY and, say, BARGAINBA Y or BLINGBA Y).1 07 Because there is no confusion as to source, no action for trademark infringement will lie. Nevertheless, the appearance of the junior mark is thought to harm, however slightly, the senior mark by impairing its "uniqueness or individuality" in the marketplace and rendering it less commercially persuasive. Fearing that the senior mark will be pushed along a slippery slope towards indistinctiveness antidilution protection seeks to forestall any such impairment. As the House Report accompanying the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 stated, "[c]onfusion leads to immediate inj ury, while dilution is an infection, which if allowed to spread, will inevitably destroy the MARKETING RES. advertising value of the mark."108 Though the law and economics theory of trademark law has tried to explain antidilution protection at least in part in terms of search costs, 109 their view has had little influence in the courts.11° More commonly, when courts discuss the basis for antidilution protection, they recognize that it was conceived of and legislated for the purpose of protecting the "selling power"111 and "advertising value"112 of trademark distinctiveness.113 Suppose an upscale restaurant calls itself "Tiffany." There is little danger that the consuming public will think it's dealing with a branch of the Tiffany jewelry store if it patronizes this restaurant. But when consumers next see the name "Tiffany" they may think about both the restaurant and the jewelry store, and if so the efficacy of the name as an identifier of the store will be diminished. Consumers will have to think harder -incur as it were a higher imagination cost -to recognize the name as the name of the store. (giving examples of conduct that "dilute[s] the selling power of ... trademarks by blurring their 'uniqueness and singularity'" (quoting Schechter, supra note 97, at 831)); Nabisco, Inc. v. PF Brands, Inc., 191 F.3d 208, 217 (2d Cir. 1999) ("Even when an unauthorized use of the mark does not cause consumer confusion, it can reduce the public's perception that the mark signifies something unique, singular, or particular. The junior use thereby diminishes the selling power that a distinctive mark or name with favorable associations has engendered for a product in the mind of the consuming public." (citations and alterations omitted)); Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, Inc. v. Utah Div. of Travel Dev. 170 F.3d 449, 456 (4th Cir. 1999) ("[F]requently alluding to Schechter's identification of the senior mark's 'selling power,' and the 'whittling away' of that power as the ultimate concerns of dilution's special protective function, the courts seem generally to have assumed that loss of that power, and the economic value it represents, was the end harm at which the antidilution statutes were aimed."). 112. See, e.g., Moseley, 537 U.S. at 427 (quoting H.R. REP No. 104-374, supra note 108); Sally Gee, Inc. v. Myra Hogan, Inc., 699 F.2d 621, 625 (2d Cir. 1983) (defining dilution as "an act which threatens two separable but related components of advertising value. Junior uses may blur a mark's product identification or they may tarnish the affirmative associations a mark has come to convey." (quoting 3 R. CALLMANN, THE LAW OF UNFAIR COMPETITION, TRADEMARKS, AND MONOPOLIES § 84.2, at 954-55 (3d ed. 1967))).

## The Restatement explains:

*p. 28*
The antidilution statutes have been invoked against two distinct threats to the interests of a trademark owner. First, a mark may be so highly distinctive and so well advertised that it acts as a powerful selling tool. Such a mark may evoke among prospective purchasers a positive response that is associated exclusively with the goods or services of the trademark owner. To the extent that others use the trademark to identify different goods, services, or

## B. Persuasion Sophistication and the Persuasion Sophistication Curve

*p. 29*
Of course, differential distinctiveness does not have the same persuasive effect on all consumers. Some consumers have higher "persuasion costs" than others. That is, it is more costly to affect the preferences of some consumers than it is to affect the preferences of others. This is because some consumers have greater persuasion sophistication than others.

*p. 29*
Persuasion sophistication refers to a consumer's ability to resist commercial persuasion attempts. An important component of persuasion sophistication is what Marian Friestad and Peter Wright have termed, in groundbreaking research, "persuasion knowledge."114 A consumer's persuasion knowledge consists of her commonsense beliefs and experiential hypotheses about the motives, tactics, and efficacy of commercial persuasion agents, such as advertisements, salespeople, and brands. 115 These beliefs and hypotheses, often amounting to "persuasion heuristics"116 or schema, enable the consumer to "cope"117 with marketplace persuasion. Consumers may also draw businesses, a dissonance occurs that blurs this stimulant effect of the mark. The antidilution statutes protect against this dilution of the distinctiveness and selling power of the mark.

## Friestad and Wright explain:

*p. 29*
We propose that persuasion knowledge is a set of interrelated beliefs about (a) the psychological events that are instrumental to persuasion, (b) the causes and effects of those events, (c) the importance of the events, (d) the extent to which people can control their psychological responses, ( e) the temporal course of the persuasion process, and ( f) the effectiveness and appropriateness of particular persuasion tactics. At some stage of development, adults' persuasion knowledge will resemble a model or theory of a "common sense psychology" of persuasion.

*p. 29*
Friestad & Wright, Persuasion Knowledge Model, supra note 114, at 6 (citation omitted). 117. See Friestad & Wright, Persuasion Knowledge Model, supra note 114, at 3 ("This term implies resourcesful participants who pursue their own goals and have the ability to esteem, 122 "impulsivity," 123 susceptibility to "peripheral cues," 124 gender,125 culture,126 and age.127

*p. 31*
Trademark case law and commentary has long acknowledged the concept of persuasion sophistication, albeit without speaking of it explicitly. The law has operated according to the assumption that, as in search sophistication, the distribution of persuasion sophistication across the general consumer population forms a bell curve. Some consumers have low persuasion sophistication and are especially susceptible to the persuasive power of distinctive brands (e.g., children and adolescents128), some have high persuasion sophistication and are 122. See 128. See, e.g. , Toys "R" Us, Inc. v. Canarsie Kiddie Shop, Inc., 559 F. Supp. 1189, 1199 (E.D.N.Y. 1983) ("A common, if not nagging, experience of parenthood is the coercion of children that their clothing be of a current style and purchased in a designated place. These vigorous promptings of children to which parents not infrequently succumb make the children, in reality, the true purchasers with the resultant lowering of the level of sophistication."); see also A.G. Papandreou, supra note 95, at 504 ("It should be clear, of (Vol. 103:2020 not (e.g., professional buyers129), and most consumers fall somewhere in between. The mean of this curve defines the reasonably susceptibleor, depending on your point of view, reasonably insusceptible - y , --------------------- consumer. Though the case law and commentary are not as clear on this point, one may also assume the existence of a bell curve of persuasion sophistication within the specific consumer population relevant to the facts of the case. If we are worried about the persuasive effects of a strong mark, it is not because we assume that the trademark is persuading all relevant consumers, but simply an appreciable proportion. Figure 2 sets forth, albeit in a highly schematic form, the law's understanding of the relation between a given consumer's persuasion sophistication and the degree of differential distinctiveness necessary to affect that consumer's preferences, all else remaining equal. Consumers with a relatively low degree of persuasion sophistication, x1' will be persuaded by even a relatively low degree of differential distinctiveness, y1, and its attendant "selling power." Inversely, consumers with a relatively high degree of persuasion sophistication, x2, will only be persuaded by a relatively high degree of differential distinctiveness, y 2 • In a situation where a highly distinctive mark confronts a consumer with little persuasion sophistication, that is, in a situation above the curve at point F, the mark's "selling power" is thought to be highly effective. The course, that the influential use of trade-marks is limited to a certain type of marketnamely a market in which the buyers lack expertness."). 129. See, e.g. , Castle Oil Corp. v. Castle Energy Corp., 26 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1481, 1484 (E.D. Pa. 1992); see also Papandreou, supra note 95, at 505 ("In markets in which the consumers tend to be experts, the use of trade-marks will tend to be either informative or ineffective -but not influential. The misappropriation aspect of trade-mark simulation, therefore, is particularly if not exclusively relevant for products sold in markets of inexpert consumers.").

## Search and Persuasion 2051

*p. 33*
vertical distance between point F and the persuasion curve itself measures the extent to which the differential distinctiveness of the mark no longer merely effectuates preferences by serving as an informational device, but rather constructs those preferences or serves as their object.

*p. 33*
In a situation below the curve at point G, the persuasiveness of the mark is thought to have insufficient effect.

## C. Self-Positioning on the Persuasion Sophistication Curve

*p. 33*
Litigants typically decline to invoke the concepts of persuasion and persuasion sophistication in trademark litigation, preferring instead to focus on what may appear to be the dispositive issue, whether consumers are confused, not whether they are deluded. Litigants do so at their peril. Judges have not hesitated to volunteer in their opinions130 -and their public lectures131 -their own views on the 1980) ("We commonly identify ourselves by displaying emblems expressing allegiances. Our jewelry, clothing, and cars are emblazoned with inscriptions showing the organizations we belong to, the schools we attend, the landmarks we have visited, the sports teams we support, the beverages we imbibe.") (finding no infringement), Smith v. Chanel, Inc., 402 F.2d 562, 567 (9th Cir. 1968) ("The primary value of the modem trademark lies in the 'conditioned reflex developed in the buyer by imaginative or often purely monotonous selling of the mark itself.' To the extent that advertising of this type succeeds, it is suggested, the trademark is endowed with sales appeal independent of the quality or price of the product to which it is attached; economically irrational elements are introduced into consumer choices; and the trademark owner is insulated from the normal pressures of price and quality competition. In consequence the competitive system fails to perform its function of allocating available resources efficiently." (quoting Derring, Tra demarks on Noncompetitive Products, 36 OR. L. REV. 1, 2 (1956))) (finding no infringement), Standard Brands, Inc. v. Smidler, 151 F.2d 34, 41 n.13 (2d Cir. 1945) (Frank, J., concurring) ("Non economic snobbish desires of consumers (of the kind analyzed by Veblen) and the satisfaction of their desires engendered by ignorance have been said to be entitled to judicial protection, at least in the Federal Trade Commission cases. It is perhaps not inappropriate to ask whether snobbism and catering to ignorance are important social interests deserving governmental assistance." (citations omitted)), and E. Wine Corp. v. Winslow-Warren, Ltd., 137 F.2d 955, 958 (2d Cir. 1943) ("The protection of such monopolies in names seems, then, to rest on the social interest in protecting primarily, not the consumer, but the businessman who has gained a strategic advantage, through building up of good will.") (reversing lower court and finding no infringement). costs and benefits of the persuasive function of trademarks, and these views arguably affect outcomes. Where views have differed on the issue, appellate courts have reversed lower courts 132 or reported dissents. 133 The judiciary's concern with persuasion is especially evident in its adj udication of antidilution claims. Empirical work has confirmed that many judges do not like to enforce antidilution statutes.134 The explanation traditionally given is that these judges are reluctant to grant broad "rights in gross" in words, images, or product features.135 They suffer, in other words, from a condition common to centuries of trademark thinking: "monopolyphobia." 136 But this explanation is incomplete. It does not do justice to the implicit social welfare analysis underlying the courts' "phobia." Courts routinely grant "in gross" property rights in patentable and copyrightable subject matter because they believe that to do so will "promote the Progress."137 The difference with trademarks is that when courts weigh the costs of monopoly rights in signs against the benefits of "selling power," they apparently see no good reason to protect the latter.138 133. See, e.g., White v. Samsung Elecs. Am ., 989 F.2d 1512, 1512 (9th Cir. 1993) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from the order denying the petition for rehearing en bane); cf Esercizio v. Roberts, 944 F.2d 1235, 1248 (6th Cir. 1991) (Kennedy, J., dissenting from the decision to affirm the district court's grant of inj unctive relief).

*p. 34*
134. See Clarissa Long, Dilution (unpublished working paper, on file with author) (demonstrating through review of 1996-2004 federal case law a substantial decline in enforcement rates of claims brought under the FfDA). On the recognition of judicial hostility to antidilution statutes, see, for example, Ringling Bros.-Bamum & Bailey Combined Shows, Inc. v. Utah Div. of Travel Dev., 170 F.3d 449, 457 (4th Cir. 1999) (noting a "period of general judicial hostility to the whole statutory dilution concept"); Note, Dilution: Tra demark Infringement or Will-0'-the-Wisp ?, 77 HARV. L. REV. 520, 528 (1964) (noting courts' practice of "drawing the teeth" of antidilution laws). 135. See, e.g. , Avery Dennison Corp. v. Sumpton, 189 F.3d 868, 875 (9th Cir. 1999) ("Dilution causes of action, much more so than infringement and unfair competition laws, tread very close to granting 'rights in gross' in a trademark."). REP. 193, 212 (1981) (noting that whereas courts may be willing to protect personal celebrity, they "do not sympathize as readily with commercial interests as with personal interests."). But see Ty Inc. v. Perryman, 306 F.3d 509,

*p. 35*
In the scholarly commentary, persuasion sophistication is a concept of central importance, particularly for restrictionists. Indeed, their low estimation of the average consumer's persuasion sophistication appears to form the basis of their belief that trademark rights should be restricted. 139 Ralph Brown, the late dean of the restrictionists, first spoke of persuasion sophistication in 1948, when he listed consumers' '"sales resistance,' a compound of realism, skepticism, and apathy," as one possible force that could counter "advertising propaganda."140 Brown set little store in "sales resistance," however. He viewed consumers as essentially defenseless victims of modem advertising who had lost control of their preferences.141 Some recent restrictionist commentators have been especially severe in the presentation of this view, 142 while others express uneasiness about trademarks' persuasive power but are less willing to condemn induced preferences outright.143

## For example, Lunney writes:

*p. 35*
[S]ome advertising and associated trademarks serve as a form of blackmail. Such advertising seeks to persuade us by first creating or exacerbating our insecurities and self-doubts. It tells us that we are not pretty enough, not popular enough, not hip enough, not rich enough. Only after it has shaken our self-image and disturbed our self-contentment does this type of advertising step forward to offer a remedy. Many consumers are susceptible to these ads and will take the remedy offered. This advertising can therefore persuade consumers to purchase a good they would not otherwise have bought or pay more for a good than they would otherwise have paid. This increased willingness to buy does not, however, reflect an aggregate increase in utility, even if we limit our consideration to those consumers who are persuaded to purchase. In many cases, the consumer may pay the higher price simply to restore her pre-advertisement satisfaction level.

*p. 35*
Lunney, supra note 14, at 420 n.212. 140. Brown, supra note 13, at 1183. Later commentators have impliedly spoken of the concept as well. See, e.g. , Litman, supra note 88, at 1727 ("At some level, most consumers know [about various marketing tactics); most of them have nonetheless settled on their own favorite advertised brands."). 141. See Brown, supra note 13, at 1180-83. 142. See, e.g. , Lunney, supra note 14, at 420 n.212 ("[T)o the extent that advertising and a trademark successfully generate an unthinking buying response -a trained reaction to the presence of a trademark where perception of the mark stimulates hand to wallet without conscious thought -does that represent a legitimate form of welfare enhancement? Were Pavlov's dogs happier after they had been trained to salivate at the sound of a dinner bell?"); cf Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover, Commerce & Communication, 71 TEX. L. REV. 697, 698 (1993) ("In the real marketplace ... there is a free trade in commercial images that encourages fantasized decisions by the consumer .... [I)t is a place where the consumer exchanges money for magic, where commercial communication promises fantasy more than utility."); Mark Hager, Against Liberal Ideology: A Guide to Critical Legal Studies, By Mark Kelman, 37 AM. U. L. REV. 1051, 1071 n.66 (1988) (book review) (questioning whether consumer sovereignty is possible in a "quasi-totalitarian system of propaganda about what is worth having in life"). Trademark apologists, in contrast, typically attribute to consumers a high degree of persuasion sophistication, or at least argue that commercial persuasion does not unduly affect consumer preferences. Of course, Landes and Posner adopt this view.144 Other commentators do as well.145 To their credit, the highly influential treatise writers J. Thomas McCarthy and Jerome Gilson and Anne Gilson LaLonde, who are generally apologist in orientation, also acknowledge the issue of consumer susceptibility. Yet they decline to attribute to it any doctrinal significance, presenting it instead as beyond the bounds of their treatises and thus, by implication, as exogenous to the model of trademark law they espouse.146

*p. 36*
Apparently in the alternative, apologists conduct a kind of co optation or subtending maneuver, in which consumers are understood not to resist persuasion, but to embrace it. The differential distinctiveness of the mark is redefined as a component of the product supplying information to help satisfy preferences already formed does not mean that the induced preferences are 'irrational' or 'bad' or that they should count as a social cost in considering whether to protect the mark."); Mark A. Lemley, Th e Modern Lanham Act and the Death of Common Sense, 108 YALE L.J. 1687, 1709 (1999) ("Nor should we be particularly concerned that consumers seem to want to treat trademarks as things in themselves. Most sociologists would look at the premium prices paid for certain brand logos as 'irrational' preferences. If the consumer really is king, however, this may not be a fair judgment."); Litman, supra note 88, at 1727 ("Anecdotal evidence suggests that many consumers don't feel duped, or, in any event, don't mind being duped.").

*p. 36*
144. See LANDES & POSNER, ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, supra note 16, at 173 ("This concern (that trademarks "bamboozle the public"] has gained no foothold in trademark law. The implicit economic model that guides that law is our model, in which trademarks lower consumers' search costs by providing them with valuable information about brands and encourage quality control rather than create social waste and consumer deception.").

*p. 36*
145. See, e.g. , Jerre B. Swann, Sr., Dilution Redefined fo r the Year 2002, 92 TRADEMARK REP. 585, 617 (2002) (citing survey evidence in which consumers listed "high quality and reliability" as their most important purchase criterion and "advertising" as their ninth most important); Swann, et al., supra note 1, at 791 ("Today, however, it has been demonstrated that consumers are not easily misled."); Peter S. Menell, Intellectual Property: General Th eories, in 2 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LAW AND ECONOMICS 129, 149 (Boudewijn Bouckaert & Gerrit De Geest eds., 2000) ("Some early industrial organization economists were critical of advertising (and hence marking) on the ground that they 'unnaturally' stimulated demand, thereby fostering and perpetuating oligopoly through 'artificial' product differentiation. This view has been largely supplanted by theoretical arguments and empirical evidence supporting the view that advertising and trademarks are an efficient means of providing information in the marketplace." (citations omitted)); Rose, supra note 136 (advocating antidilution protection in order to protect the trademark's "advertising value").

*p. 36*
146. See, e.g., MCCARTHY, supra note 43, § 2:36 ("If the public wishes to buy a popular brand of aspirin that costs more rather than a lesser-known brand of allegedly identical aspirin that costs much less, that is the consumer's choice .... (W]ho is to say where the line lies between rational and irrational consumer choices? Can the law ignore the real psychological benefits of consumer buying habits based upon motivations not measured in dollars and cents?"); see also JEROME GILSON & ANNE GILSON LALONDE, GILSON ON TRADEMARK PROTECTION AND PRACTICE § 1.03 (2004) ("(The consumer] can thus distinguish between the products and choose one for whatever reason, logical or illogical, motivates him: quality, price, servicing, advertising, premiums, financing terms, or salesman persistence."); id. § 1.03 n.30 ("The reasons why the consumer selects one brand over another are beyond the scope of this treatise."). itself, a component for which the rational consumer knowingly and willingly pays.147 Persuasion, on this view, becomes information; the performative becomes the constative.148 It is "knowledge, whether real or fancied,"149 that functions as an input, with goods, time, and other inputs, in one's own production of higher-order "commodities."150 V. THE RELATION BETWEEN SEARCH SOPHISTICATION AND PERSUASION SOPHISTICATION So far, I have discussed the schools' antithetical positions on search sophistication in isolation from their antithetical positions on persuasion sophistication. Here, I bring each school's positions together. If the schools are antithetical to each other, they are also internally antithetical. Each school seeks essentially to have its cake and eat it too, to argue that the average consumer is either sovereign or fool in search and the other in preference formation. This would be of merely academic interest, if that, but for the progress all the while of the law itself. In the political economy of trademark law, there are not merely apologist and restrictionist forces or plaintiffs and defendants before the bar. There are also trademark producers, and these producers have exploited the dialectical relation between search and persuasion -the very dialectic that has so embroiled the academic schools -to bring about a slow, steady expansion in the scope of trademark protection.

*p. 37*
To prepare the way for this discussion, however, I turn first to a brief consideration of the politics underlying trademark critique.

*p. 37*
147. See, e.g. , MCCARTHY, supra note 43, § 2:36; Nicholas S. Economides, Th e Economics of Trademarks, 78 TRADEMARK REP. 523, 535 (1988) ("[P)erception advertising provides consumers with products (mental images) that they value, and which would have been scarce in its absence."); Swann et al., supra note 1, at 802 ("Consumers who so use brands [as means of self-expression) have not been 'duped'; rather, they simply appreciate that life encompasses more than quality and price, and utilize brands as another form of communication and self-satisfaction. Consumers, today, pay brand premiums for a whole host of benefits that transcend functionality."); cf Brown, supra note 13, at 1181 ("The buyer of an advertised good buys more than a parcel of food or fabric; he buys the pause that refreshes, the hand that has never lost its skill, the priceless ingredient that is the reputation of its maker. All these may be illusions, but they cost money to create, and if the creators can recoup their outlay, who is the poorer? Among the many illusions which advertising can fashion are those of lavishness, refinement, security and romance."), quoted in FfC v. Borden Co., 383 U.S. 637, 649-50 n.3 (1966) (Stewart, J., dissenting).

*p. 37*
148. On the "constative" and "performative," see J.L. AUSTIN, How TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS 1-24 (1962).

*p. 37*
149. George J. Stigler & Gary S. Becker, De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum, 67 AM. ECON. REV. 76, 84 (1977); see also Gary S. Becker & Kevin M. Murphy, A Simple Theory of Advertising as a Good or Bad, 108 Q.J. ECON. 941 (1993). Douglas Kysar reviews this work in Kysar, supra note 10, at 1756. 150. See Stigler & Becker, supra note 149, at 77 (describing a "utility function of objects of choice, called commodities, that [households) produce with market goods, their own time, their skills, training and other human capital, and other inputs.").

## A. Persuasion and the Politics of Trademark Critique

*p. 38*
Any account of intellectual property is invariably grounded in a politics, i.e., a set of broader ideological assumptions and commitments. 151 This is certainly true of trademark law. The restrictionist view of trademark protection emerges out of the Left's generally suspicious view of consumption as a social practice, whereas the apologist view emerges out of the Right's generally tolerant, even quietist view of consumption. In the past quarter-century, British and American cultural studies have expressed and then identified in their own work basic conceptual tensions within the Left and Right views of consumption. 152 These tensions have reappeared in the trademark literature, and I briefly identify them here.

## Th e Tensions in the Restrictionist Account of Persuasion

*p. 38*
The tensions in the restrictionist critique are familiar, particularly to those schooled in Marxist theories of culture. 153 The restrictionist critique of trademark law grows out of a half-century tradition of "manipulationist" or "hypodermic" views of advertising and the mass media.154 On one level, this tradition has held that advertising works subliminally to create specific wants, 155 or as one court once speculated, "the average purchaser undergoes, while in the supermarket, an experience not unlike that of hypnosis." 156 On another level, the tradition laments the "hypersuggestability [of consumers] when presented with such simple injunctions as 'Buy Blogg's Biscuits.'"157 In any case, consumer wants are conceived of as manufactured rather than instinctive,158 as "situational" rather than "dispositional." 159 But this attack on the inauthenticity of consumer wants draws its standard of authenticity from a most unlikely source. The manipulationist tradition, and the restrictionist critique of trademark law with it, assumes that the consumer is somehow being manipulated if (1) her choice is informed to some degree by emotion or imagination, rather than purely by rational calculation (as when one restrictionist commentator laments that "the purchase of many advertised articles ... has a raw emotional origin"160), or (2) she is persuaded to buy a product for reasons other than its intrinsic utility (as when another questions whether product "atmospherics" deserve legal protection).161 The restrictionists' standard of authenticity is, of course, neoclassical in orientation. Their critique appears to aspire to the condition that the neoclassical theory simply assumes. It posits the existence of a pretrademark, prelapsarian state of nature, where only instinctive wants, i.e., those that precede culture, are genuine,162 and imagines as the ideal consumer in that state what is the rational, utility-maximizing sovereign consumer by any other name.

## Th e Tensions in the Apologist Account of Persuasion

*p. 39*
The tensions in the apologist account of trademark law are also familiar. The economic theory of trademark law, as of consumption, is essentially free-market libertarian. It is also emphatically populist. ("Behind many of these [criticisms of consumer culture as inauthentic] lies the idea that at some earlier period humanity lived in a firm relationship to the world around it, within which it was socialised as part of larger cosmological, moral and utilitarian projects. Today, by contrast, we simply choose/purchase our worlds with a largely ephemeral and irrational lack of genuine concern.").

*p. 40*
appear to be irrational, immoral, or, in ecological terms, suicidal. In this political economic scheme, " [t]he key value to be realized by consumer sovereignty [is] not welfare maximization of any sort, but rather the simple tolerance of the desires of others."163 The ultimate goal, in other words, is liberty, not efficiency; the latter is merely a felicitous incident of the pursuit of the former. In the name of liberty, the apologist is deeply suspicious of any effort to take from consumers "the freedom to decide, even if imperfectly,"164 and impose on them their authentic preferences.

*p. 40*
But because trademarks are also cultural forms, they force an encounter between two uncertain relatives: conservative thought on the market, which is generally libertarian and accuses restrictionists of being "moralists"165 or "puritanical,"166 and conservative thought on culture, which is generally anticomrnercial, if not authoritarian. 167 (2000) (criticizing a commentator's "almost puritanical judgments about promotional appeals to consumer emotions without understanding that there are an infinite variety of emotionally v•atid reasons, beyond avoidance of risk, why consumers buy goods"); cf Brown, supra note 13, at 1181-82. Brown writes:

*p. 40*
The nature of the satisfaction [for an advertised brand] is of concern only to the mo ralist. Though this argument can easily be pushed to absurdity -suppose it was to the interest of the advertisers to consume half the national product in persuasion? -it seems plausible if it is based on the dogma of consumer autonomy. Then anyone who questions the untrammelled use of influence by the seller and its uncoerced acceptance by the buyer is at best a Puritan, at worst a Fascist. The debate seems to end in a defense of freedom, for the advertiser as well as for the consumer.

## Id. (footnote omitted).

*p. 40*
167. On this encounter, see ALLAN BLOOM, Commerce and Culture, in GIANTS AND DWARFS: ESSAYS, 1960ESSAYS, -1990ESSAYS, , at 277, 277 (1990) ) ("The notion of 'culture' was formed in response to the rise of commercial society."). See also ALLAN BLOOM, THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND 185-216 (1987) relativism of the market, of which the trademark is a distilled form. What remains ultimately to resolve this tension in Right thought on trademark law, as on the market and culture generally, is a selective and unstable form of radical populism.169

## Th e Cultural Populist Strain in Trademark Commentary

*p. 41*
In recent years, a kind of "third way"170 in trademark critique has emerged, one which may be termed, borrowing from the label given to a similar movement in British cultural studies, a "cultural populist" school of critique.171 Like its cultural studies analogue, the cultural populist school of trademark critique is attentive to the tensions in its account of consumption as a social practice. Whether it manages to resolves these tensions, however, is another matter.

*p. 41*
The cultural populist school refuses to conceive of the consumer as the dupe of advertising. On the contrary, it is committed to the view that the consumer is active and critical, both in search and preference formation. Furthermore, it endorses differential distinctiveness and any other form of commercial affect. But it claims this affect as the property of consumers themselves, on the ground that consumers are largely responsible for its creation. In a memorable passage, Jessica Litman sets out this approach:

*p. 41*
It may well increase the total utils in our society if every time a guy drinks a Budweiser or smokes a Camel, he believes he's a stud. We may all be better off if, each time a woman colors her hair with a L'Oreal product, she murmurs to herself "and I'm worth it." If that's so, however, Warner Brothers, Anheuser-Busch, R.J. Reynolds, and L'Oreal can hardly take all the credit. They built up all that mystique with their customers' money and active collaboration.172 "symbolic work."174 It is of a piece with a more general effort in American intellectual property criticism on the Left to dissolve authorship, to redistribute ownership of the means and ends of intellectual production.175 Premised on a sweat-of-the-brow theory of property rights, it seeks to free up the affective content of trademarks for purposes of cultural and political expression. Its ideal consumer is the appropriationist artist.

*p. 42*
A hybrid of the Left and Right critiques, the cultural populist view represents the best of both worlds, and also the worst. It appears to be appealingly democratic and optimistic. It shares with the school of cultural populism in British cultural studies the view that, as John Fiske wrote, "the audience, from being a commodity, now becomes a producer, a producer of meanings and pleasures."176 It also shares with the cultural theorist Daniel Miller the view that consumer society has caused "a shift in power from production to consumption,"177 whereby it is the "productive" capacity of consumers that is the driving force in the market and culture. But the cultural populist strain does no better than neoclassical economic thought in answering the charge that consumer culture is inauthentic and corrosive of noncommercial values. In other words, it declines to explain whether the empowerment of the consumer is a progressive or regressive phenomenon.

*p. 42*
In this sense, the cultural populist strain in trademark critique comports with the general character of trademark law. It is ultimately descriptive rather than prescriptive. A "what is is good" theory of consumer culture and of trademark law's complicity in it, the cultural populist strain seeks to make a virtue of necessity.

## B. The Relation Between Search Sophistication and Persuasion Sophistication

*p. 42*
The tensions in the restrictionist and apologist views of consumption recapitulate themselves in each school's attempt to reconcile its position on search sophistication with its position on 175. See generally Hughes, supra note 156. at 926 (critiquing the "deconstructionist" view that "would liberate the word from the speaker's control and give everyone freedom to recode intellectual property").

*p. 42*
176. FISKE, supra note 171, at 27; see also JOHN FISKE, READING THE POPULAR 97 ("[I]f [Madonna's] fans are not 'cultural dopes,' but actively choose to watch, listen to, and imitate her rather than anyone else, there must be some gaps or spaces in her image that escape ideological control and allow her audiences to make meanings that connect with their social experience."). persuasion sophistication. Consider first the schools' differing analyses of the basis of trademark protection. The restrictionist critique of the basis of trademark protection has long been that consumers are easily deluded by the persuasive use of strong marks, and that the costs of this delusion tend to outweigh any gains that may arise from the informational use of such marks. The apologist response has long been the contrary, that consumers are not easily deluded by the persuasive use of strong marks, and that, at any rate, the gains that may arise from the informational use of such marks far outweigh any supposed persuasional costs. The restrictionist view of the basis of trademark protection thus emphasizes persuasion and the unsophistication of the consumer. The apologist view emphasizes information and the sophistication of the consumer.

*p. 43*
The tension arises when the two schools' attempt to reconcile their arguments as to the basis of trademark protection with their arguments as to the appropriate scope of trademark protection. The restrictionist critique of the scope of trademark protection has long been that consumers are not so easily confused by similar marks as the law believes, and thus that the average scope of protection should be contracted. Apologists have responded to the contrary, that consumers are in fact easily confused, and thus that the scope of protection should be maintained if not expanded. Here, then, the restrictionist view emphasizes information and the sophistication of the consumer. The apologist view emphasizes the unsophistication of the consumer.

*p. 43*
Note the tension: Restrictionists argue that the average consumer is not easily confused, but easily deluded; consumers have high search sophistication and low persuasion sophistication. Apologists argue that the average consumer is easily confused, but not easily deluded; consumers have low search sophistication and high persuasion sophistication. Each school's view underwrites its policy goal: The restrictionist can argue that to the extent that the average consumer is sophisticated in search, any contraction in the scope of protection will not cause confusion, but will minimize delusion. The apologist can argue that to the extent that the average consumer is sophisticated in persuasion, any expansion in the scope of protection will not cause delusion, and will minimize confusion.

## The Schizophrenic Consumer

*p. 43*
The reader may respond by questioning whether there really is any tension within either of the school's views. That is, search sophistication need not imply persuasion sophistication, and persuasion sophistication need not imply search sophistication. One can imagine, and, in fact, one frequently encounters in the case law, if not also in popular cultural representations of the consumer, a prototypical consumer whose very susceptibility to the affective power of the brand is understood to increase that consumer's perspicaciousness in search. 178 Brett Easton Ellis's description in American Psycho of Patrick Bateman's morning routine offers an especially chilling representation of such a consumer, so deluded by the power of commodity signs as to sacramentalize their every detail.179 Elle Woods of the Legally Blonde movies is another, more farcical example.180 Here, to the extent that the consumer is highly susceptible to persuasion, she is sophisticated in search. At the same time, one can imagine a consumer who cares little about the meaning of brand x as opposed to the meaning of brand y, and who buys solely on price or simply on whim. As Graeme Austin and Ann Bartow have recently shown, this image of the consumer is strikingly prevalent in the federal case law. 181 Here, to the extent that the consumer is insusceptible to persuasion, she is unsophisticated in search.

*p. 44*
There are two responses to this challenge: the first, empirical, the second, theoretical. As an empirical matter, search sophistication appears to correlate positively with persuasion sophistication.182 It is well-established that consumers with low search sophistication are also more likely to have a low degree of persuasion sophistication.183 Though there may be a colorful example to the contrary in the figure of the media-savvy because media-saturated consumer, it also appears to be the case that consumers with high search sophistication are also more likely to have high persuasion sophistication.184

*p. 44*
The theoretical response is more profound. To formulate a theory of the consumer as sovereign in one sense and fool in the other is to formulate a theory not just of the consumer, but of the citizen. One's theory of trademark law, it must be emphasized, is a species of one's theory of politics. And as a theory of politics, the apologists and restrictionist schools offer us in the schizoid consumer the worst of

## Search and Persuasion 2063

*p. 45*
each of their worlds. The political-economic subject is either confused or deluded; he either chooses on instinct but mistakenly chooses other than what his instinct instructed him to choose, or he chooses what he intended but chooses it according to external command. 185 In either case, the subject may be said to have lost control over the ends of his actions, i.e., to have lost his sovereignty. This is of, course, an outcome that both the Right and the Left are otherwise committed to avoiding, each in their own way, in the name of "liberty" and "authenticity." Not even the empirical argument that this is simply the way consumers are can save the critic from running contrary to the underlying theoretical commitments driving her critique. The "schizoid" 186 consumer simply cannot form the basis of a coherent politics, and, it follows, of a coherent theory of trademark law.

*p. 45*
The political untenability of both schools of thought has led, I think, to the emergence in the trademark literature of the cultural populist view described above, that consumers are not so much passive objects as active subjects of persuasion, and that they should, for this reason, share in the ownership of the cultural forms they have created. It is certainly pretty to think that this redemptive reading of the trademark consumer could actually lead to the freeing up of cultural resources. It is more realistic, however, to assume that no such course of action will ever be followed. Ultimately, the cultural populist account expresses a sort of forced "optimism of the will."187 On the ground, however, in pragmatic effect, it does little more than make excuses for commercial persuasion -and for the all too sovereign Patrick Bateman as the ideal type of the modern political-economic citizen-consumer.

## Persuasion Within Information

*p. 46*
What, then, if we hold, as some courts have,188 that a consumer's degree of search sophistication implies and is implied by a corresponding degree of persuasion sophistication, and thus that neither schools' views are coherent? Where does this leave us, as restrictionists, as apologists, or even as neutral parties? Figure 3 places the search sophistication and persuasion sophistication curves on the same axes. This figure makes two assumptions. First, with respect to the sophistication axis, it assumes that search sophistication and persuasion sophistication are positively related. An increase (decrease) in one correlates with an increase (decrease) in the other. Second, with respect to the scope axis, it assumes that the scope of protection afforded to a trademark has both informational and persuasive effects. In preventing similar marks from entering the marketplace, increased scope results in a lesser likelihood of consumer confusion; in simultaneously preserving, if not expanding, the mark's distinctiveness, increased scope also results in a greater likelihood of consumer persuasion.

*p. 46*
188. See, e.g., Lois Sportswear, U.S.A., Inc. v. Levi Strauss & Co., 799 F.2d 867, 875 (2d Cir. 1986) ("[I]t is a sophisticated jeans consumer who is most likely to assume that the presence of appellee's trademark stitching pattern on appellants' jeans indicates some sort of association between the two manufacturers. Presumably it is these sophisticated jeans buyers who pay the most attention to back pocket stitching patterns and their 'meanings."'); Grotrian, Helfferich, Schulz, Th. Steinweg Nachf. v. Steinway & Sons, 523 F.2d 1331, 1341-42 (2d Cir. 1975) (sophisticated buyers of prestige pianos are more likely mistakenly to associate piano manufacturers using similar trade names); In re Leslie Fay Cos., 216 B.R. 117, 132 (Bankr. S.D.N:Y. 1997) ("Assuming, arguendo, the purchasers are sophisticated, many courts have found that purchasers of designer goods are often more vulnerable to confusion by similar marks because of their strong awareness of the status of the brand name."). The apologists and restrictionists will agree on at least one implication of this figure. Recall that with respect to the search sophistication curve, for a given level of consumer sophistication, any level of scope on or above the search sophistication curve is understood to prevent consumer confusion. Both schools accept that for a given level of sophistication, scope must be set above or, optimally, at the level of the search sophistication curve.

*p. 47*
But once the persuasion sophistication curve is taken into consideration, the schools quickly part company. Recall that at least in the restrictionists' view, for a given level of sophistication, any level of scope on or above the persuasion sophistication curve is understood to cause consumer delusion, i.e., an alteration in preferences. Thus, for purposes of avoiding confusion and delusion, the restrictionist is forced to argue that, as an empirical matter, consumers are more sophisticated than the level of sophistication called for by the point, xi' at which the two curves intersect. The restrictionist is forced to do so because if consumers are less than or equal to x1 in sophistication, persuasion is simply inevitable. This is because, for such consumers, the scope of protection necessary to prevent confusion will always be in excess of the scope of protection necessary to generate persuasion.189 Indeed, as a general matter, for any trademark critic who worries about "selling power," if her argument is to have any purchase, it must assume that consumers are more sophisticated than x1• Otherwise, in minimizing scope, what is gained on the persuasion side is lost on the confusion side, and it is with the latter side of the ledger that trademark law has traditionally been most concemed.190 Thus, restrictionists are pulled to the right on the sophistication axis, where the scope of protection that generates "selling power" may be conceived of as in excess of the scope of protection that prevents confusion.191

## C. Th e Dynamic Driving the Expansion of Trademark Scope

*p. 48*
The tradeoff between information and persuasion described above goes far towards explaining one dynamic that has driven the expansion of trademark scope since the beginning of the twentieth century. At the heart of this dynamic is the trademark producer's willingness to assume the costs of search in order to gain the benefits of persuasion.

*p. 48*
So far, I have spoken of consumer search sophistication and persuasion sophistication as the independent variables and of the scope of protection as the dependent variable. I have done so only for clarity's sake in introducing the concepts and explaining their duplicity. In fact, in trademark law, the scope of protection and consumer sophistication are closely interdependent variables; scope affects sophistication just as sophistication affects scope. Trademark rights are essentially circular in nature, and not just in the sense in which all property rights are circular,192 but in a sense much more specific to trademark doctrine. The scope of trademark protection is based largely on the law's assessment of the degree of actual search sophistication among consumers in the marketplace, yet the degree of search sophistication consumers bring to the marketplace depends largely on the scope of trademark protection they expect to find there. 193 The law thus sets the consumer expectations that are purportedly the gauge of the law's grant. As the Tenth Circuit has acknowledged, the consumer confusion basis for trademark protection results in a "self-fulfilling prophecy. "194 This circularity of trademark rights is, I suggest, vicious in nature, tending towards an ever broader scope of protection and ever less sophistication among consumers. This is because the circularity of trademark rights involves more than simply a two-way relation between consumer perception and legal right. There is a third party, namely, the trademark producer. Producers, particularly of strong marks, have proven willing to assume the search costs of consumers, for, as we have seen, in assuming such costs, producers also generate persuasion. Rational, cost-minimizing consumers, meanwhile, are quite willing to transfer such costs, i.e., to direct their attention to activities other than search. 195 Because it sees itself as essentially descriptive, the law has not acted as a check upon this shifting of search costs. Instead, it has merely confirmed each new stage of the dynamic by which (1) greater distinctiveness (a shift up on the y-axis) has led the law to require lower levels of search sophistication (a shift left on the x-axis), and (2) resulting lower levels of search sophistication have led the law to grant a broader scope of protection (a shift up on the y-axis). Ultimately, it is the scope of protection that becomes the independent variable and sophistication that is dependent upon it.

*p. 49*
Of course, what should act as a check on this process are the actions of other producers or the intervention of strong judges. Neither force, however, has proven to be effective. For their part, about the official sponsorship of the ornamented items -assumptions that rest in tum on consumers' views about whether trademark owners have the legal right to control such use."). McCarthy also notes this circularity:

*p. 49*
If consumers think that most uses of a trademark require authorization, then in fact they will require authorization because the owner can enjoin consumer confusion caused by unpermitted uses or charge for licenses. And if owners can sue to stop unauthorized uses, then only authorized uses will be seen by consumers, creating or reinforcing their perception that authorization is necessary. This is a "chicken and the egg" conundrum. MCCARTHY, supra note 43, § 24:9.

*p. 49*
194. Vornado Air Circulation Sys., Inc. v. Duracraft Corp., 58 F.3d 1498, 1509 (10th Cir. 1995) ("We recognize also that consumer confusion resulting from the copying of product features is, in some measure, a self-fulfilling prophecy. To the degree that useful product configurations are protected as identifiers, consumers will come to rely on them for that purpose, but if copying is allowed, they will depend less on product shapes and more on labels and packaging."); see also Duraco Prods., Inc. v. Joy Plastic Enters., Ltd., 40 F.3d 1431, 1451 (3d Cir. 1994) ("We acknowledge that, to a large extent, how courts resolve the inherent distinctiveness inquiry could, theoretically at least, cause a snowballing effect. If product configurations are easily protected, consumers might learn to rely on configurations as source designators; if protection is rare, consumers will disregard product configurations as source designators, and no confusion will result.").

*p. 49*
195. See Alba & Hutchinson, supra note 58, at 412 (discussing the assumption that "consumers generally have a disutility for cognitive effort").

*p. 50*
(Vol. 103:2020 trademark producers have only quickened the dynamic. Producers of strong marks compete to be more, not less differentially distinctive. They compete to take on more of the search costs of the consumer than their rivals, that is, to be even easier to find, to be even higher up on the y-axis. They seek, in short, to accumulate distinction, to stand out from the clutter of the marketplace at the same time that they add to it. The resulting inflation in distinctiveness has not restrained the law's stupefaction of the consumer, but rather facilitated it. The story of American trademark law is a story in which producers have been encouraged to bring ever more information to the marketplace, inside of which is persuasion, and consumers have been allowed to bring ever less, inside of which might have been persuasion sophistication.

*p. 50*
What then of judicial intervention? Here, truly, is the rub. As currently understood, trademark law is a primarily descriptive enterprise, one which seeks simply to insure that market information is accurately conveyed and comprehended. This is especially the case in the context of the consumer confusion inquiry. 196 The law commands that courts assess whether or not consumers are actually confused, not whether or not they should be confused.197 As Judge Neaher of the Eastern District of New York put it many decades ago:

*p. 50*
In weighing the evidence of likelihood of confusion, the court must strive to place itself in the shoes of a prospective purchaser. In this role, the court does not act as an enlightened educator of the public but takes into account the mythical ordinary purchaser's capacity to discriminate as well as his propensity for carelessness.198

*p. 50*
To be sure, judges occasionally chafe at such a standard, as when one court declared that "there simply must be some limits to the claimed asininity"199 of the consumer. But more often, the court accepts that the reasonable consumer standard is a descriptive standard based on the average level of consumer sophistication in the relevant population, rather than a prescriptive standard based on what ought to Search and Persuasion 2069 be a reasonable level of sophistication in that population.2 00 To the extent that the court does so even when that average level contradicts what is otherwise "reasonable," the court merely furthers the dynamic of ever more trademark protection and ever less consumer sophistication.

## VI. CONCLUSION: THE SOVEREIGN TRADEMARK

*p. 51*
The received orthodoxy that trademark law exists to minimize our search costs elides a fundamental question: are we searching for trademarks or are trademarks searching for us? Is trademark law dedicated to the minimization of their search costs or ours? At the core of any politics of trademark law is a theory of agency. The commentator proceeds from an initial assumption ab out the degree to which consumers act or are acted upon, about the degree to which they are the creative subjects or the created obj ects of the trademark system, if not of the political-economic system more generally. The apologist commentator traditionally assumes that consumers act, the restrictionist, that consumers are acted upon. From these premises follow calls for more or less or at least different kinds of paternalism.

*p. 51*
The restrictionists' hope has always been that the vicious cycle of ever more scope and ever less sophistication will someday reverse course and become virtuous. The hope is that strong judges will intervene, ratchet down scope, and, at the cost of some short term confusion, prod consumers into bringing more sophistication to the marketplace. It is fair to say that this hope is now held in vain. Through the course of the 1980s and '90s, the American trademark system changed fundamentally. Trademarks grew stronger and consumers grew weaker. A variety of legislative and judge-made reforms brought about this change. The Trademark Law Revision Act of 1988201 instituted an intent-to-use registration process, under which legal protection was no longer predicated upon consumer perception.202 The Act also expanded enormously the subject matter and scope of protection under Section 43(a).203 Meanwhile, courts 200. See generally MCCARTHY, supra note 43, § 23:91-103. This raises the important question asked by Graeme Dinwoodie among others: "[S]hould trademark law be structured reactively to protect whatever consumer understandings or producer goodwill develops, or should it proactively seek to shape the ways in which consumers shop and producers sell or seek to acquire rights, thus ordering how the economy functions?" See must consider the similarity of the marks, the similarity and quality of the goods, the sophistication of consumers, any overlap in "marketing channels," and much else.209 Such are the limitations of "negative capability." The second is the dilution cause of action. With the TDRA, this is a largely formal inquiry. The question is whether defendant's mark is sufficiently similar to plaintiff's as to be likely to create an "association" between them in a consumer's mind. 210 The issue of search sophistication is simply irrelevant to the inquiry, and so apparently is the issue of persuasion sophistication -the consumer, no matter how sophisticated, cannot control the associations her mind makes. If, as some empirical literature has begun to suggest, human beings possess two systems of reasoning, the one rule-based and analytical, the other associative and intuitive,211 then the whole point of antidilution protection becomes clear: it seeks to maximize the trademark's appeal to the consumer's associative system of reasoning, to her "reptilian brain."212 The law has indeed become prescriptive, "proactive,"213 but not in the way the restrictionists had intended. And it has found in the trademark itself the predictable, administrable, and apparently ameliorative psychology that it could not find in the consumer.

*p. 53*
If there is such a thing as the postmodern condition,214 then the crisis in subjectivity that is understood to characterize it215 is writ small in American trademark law. The consumer, once sovereign, has been deposed, deprivileged, decentered; the language has displaced its speaker. Our concern now is with the subjectivity of the trademark. In it we seek the predictability and administrability we could not find in the consumer. In our new-found formalism, we compare trademarks against other trademarks, signs against other signs. Our goal all the while is to enhance the power of the sign system. Perhaps, then, the true ideal type of the trademark system is neither the sovereign consumer nor the fool, but the professional auto racer and all those like him, covered over with trademarks as if with the lesions of a parasitic disease, and the "negative capability" that is called for now is the capability to see the world not as the consumer sees it, but as the trademark sees it.

## Footnotes

> Michigan Law Review[Vol. 103:2020

> Glynn S. Lunney, Jr., Tra demark Monopolies, 48 EMORY L.J. 367, 428 (1999).

> Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. McNeil-P.P.C., Inc., 973 F.2d 1033, 1045 (2d Cir. 1992).

> See Ann Bartow, Likelihood of Confusion, 41 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 721, 770-92 (2004) (criticizing factors traditionally used by courts in determining consumer sophistication); see also MCCARTHY, supra note 43, § 23:91-103.

> Michigan Law Review (Vol. 103:2020

> Cf Brown, supra note 13, at 1205 ("As we have seen, [the trade symbol] may at once represent: (1) the source of goods[,] (2) the reputation of that source[,] (3) satisfaction with the goods themselves[,] (4) persuasive advertising value[, and] (5) intrinsic symbol value. We have agreed that the first three are desirable private interests, entitled to protection. The last two are not. But if they are all combined in a single symbol, the degree of exclusive use permitted as a safeguard against confusion of source, reputation, or goods, necessarily carries the rest along with it.").

> 30. LUDWIG WITIGENSTEIN, PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 261 (G.E.M. Anscombe trans., 1958) ("So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.").

> http://oami.eu.int/en/office/diff/textes/c-342-97.htm (June 22, 1999) ("[A]ccount should be taken of the fact that the average consumer only rarely has the chance to make a direct comparison between the different marks but must place his trust in the imperfect picture of them that he has kept in his mind. It should also be borne in mind that the average consumer's level of attention is likely to vary according to the category of goods or services in question."). 70. See Indianapolis Colts, Inc. v. Metro. Baltimore Football Club L.P., 34 F.3d 410, 414 (7th Cir. 1994) ("[I]t would be undesirable to impoverish the lexicon of trade names merely to protect the most gullible fringe of the consuming public."); Life Savers Corp. v. Curtiss Candy Co., 182 F.2d 4, 8 (7th Cir. 1950) ("A new competitor is not held to the obligations of an insurer against all possible confusion. He is not obligated to protect the negligent and inattentive purchaser from confusion resulting from indifference. It has been said that he is not required to make the market 'foolproof."' (citation omitted)). 71. See Int'! Ass'n of Machinists & Aerospace Workers v. Winship Green Nursing Ctr., ("Befuddlement is part of the human condition."); Playboy Enters. v. Netscape Communications Corp., 55 F. Supp. 2d 1070, 1083 (C.D. Cal. 1999) ("Some people are always confused.").

> & ARTS123, 133 (1996).

> FIGURE 2 THE PERSUASION SOPHISTICATION CURVE