"If this is held to be unconstitutional, what is going to happen with whatever list of really dirty words still exist and all of their variations?"

"There's going to be a mad scramble by people to register these marks. And the ones who get there first are going to have exclusive -- they're not unlimited. What's going to -- there's going to be -- those who get there first are going to be the ones who have these."

Asked Justice Alito in yesterday's oral argument in Iancu v. Brunetti (PDF), challenging the Patent and Trademark office's rejection of the trademark "Fuct."

By the way, no one in the transcript ever says "Fuct" or "fuck" or whatever other "really dirty words" might be rolling around in Justice Alito's head. They say things like: "this mark would be perceived by a substantial segment of the public as the equivalent of the profane past participle form of a well-known word of profanity and perhaps the paradigmatic word of profanity in our language."

The lawyer for the designer that uses the trademark argued that the law violates the First Amendment: "For overbreadth, I believe it's only necessary to show that it covers a substantial amount of speech. And the provision is so incredibly overbroad, because if it's taken at its word ['offensive'] -- at its -- on its face, Steak 'n Shake can't be registered because some people believe you can't -- a substantial portion of Americans believe that eating beef is immoral. And so now that's unconstitutional...."

Here's Nina Totenberg's report on the argument: "Supreme Court Dances Around The F-Word With Real Potential Financial Consequences."