I marchi e i bassifondi dello spirito. Il divieto di registrazione dei segni contrari all’ordine pubblico o al buon costume

The essay deals with the ban on registration of immoral or scandalous trademarks, and of trademarks infringing public policy. The paper tackles the issue of the apparent contradiction between the ban on registration and the protection of obscene, profane, or “subversive” signs used as de facto trademarks. According to the author, the ban on registration is the outcome of the waiver of the law to utmost control of purely social-cultural phenomena, such as somebody’s attraction towards the scandalous, the immoral, the “subversive”, alongside the refusal of the law itself to contribute to this attraction, by granting special rights on obscene, immoral or “subversive” signs.