Historical Context: Alabama Secretary of State

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The Historical Context for the Alabama Secretary of State has been posted from the Records Disposition Authority (RDA) approved by the State Records Commission on October 27, 2021. The RDA establishes disposition requirements by designating records as either temporary records which may be destroyed after a specified retention period, or permanent records, which must be preserved in perpetuity. The complete RDAs for close to 175 agencies can be found on the Alabama Department of Archives and History website.

The history of the Secretary of State’s Office predates the establishment of the state of Alabama. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which served as a model for the government of the Mississippi Territory (including the present-day state of Alabama), provided for the appointment of a territorial secretary. The secretary’s duties were “to keep and preserve the acts and laws passed by the legislature, and the public records of the district, and the proceedings of the governor in his executive department, and [to] transmit authentic copies of such acts and proceedings, every six months, to the Secretary of Congress.”[1]

When the U.S. Congress created the Alabama Territory in 1817, it provided that “the President of the United States shall have power to appoint a…secretary for the said Alabama [T]erritory,”[2] subject to the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. Alabama’s territorial secretary had the same rights and responsibilities as the secretary of the Mississippi Territory.

In 1819, the constitution which formed Alabama’s state government provided for a Secretary of State to be appointed jointly by both houses of the Legislature. The 1819 Constitution empowered the Secretary of State to “keep a fair register of all official acts and proceedings of the Governor.” The Secretary of State was also responsible for attesting to the Governor’s signature on official documents and for accepting election returns.[3]

The Secretary of State served a two-year term from 1819 until 1901, when the Constitution of 1901 increased the term to four years. The Legislature selected the Secretary of State until 1868, but since that time the Secretary has been elected by popular vote.

The role of the Secretary of State has significantly expanded over the last two hundred years of Alabama’s history. As of October 2021, the Secretary of State’s Office has more than one thousand different specific duties outlined in statute. [4] More information on some of the Secretary of State’s key duties is provided below.

Executive Duties

The Secretary of State serves as the personal notary public to the Governor. Many executive records (such as executive orders and states of emergency) are signed by both the Governor and the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State witnesses the Governor’s signature of these documents and affixes the Great Seal of Alabama upon them. [5] The Secretary also serves as custodian of the Great Seal of Alabama.[6]

Notaries public are appointed by county probate judges, but the Secretary of State maintains records, transmitted to the Secretary of State by the probate judges, related to all notaries public appointed and commissioned in the state of Alabama. Probate offices “report to the Secretary of State the name, county of residence, date of issuance, and date of expiration of the commission of each notary public appointed and commissioned.”[7] The Secretary of State is empowered to directly appoint civil law notaries and to promulgate rules and regulations governing the record keeping practices of civil law notaries.[8]

**Explanatory Note: A notary public, also called a common law notary, is responsible for positively identifying document signers, taking signer acknowledgments, administering oaths and affirmations and executing jurats. A civil law notary, on the other hand, is authorized to prepare legal documents, authenticate transactions, and advise participants in certain legal matters. Civil law notaries have specialized legal training, while notaries public are ministerial officers who are not required to have studied law.[9]

Election Administration

The Secretary of State is “the chief elections official in [Alabama] and shall provide uniform guidance for election activities.”[10] The Secretary of State promulgates rules and regulations for various election processes, including absentee voting and provisional voting.[11] The Secretary administers federal and statewide elections in collaboration with various local government agencies including, but not limited to, circuit clerks’ offices, boards of registrars, county probate offices, and county sheriffs’ offices.[12]

**Explanatory Note: The election cycle consists of several elections, the first of which is a primary election, defined as “an election to select candidates to run for public office.” The selected candidates will represent the political parties in the general election. The results of the primary election may necessitate the occurrence of a runoff election. A runoff election is an additional election that occurs when no candidate received a majority of votes in the primary election. Finally, a general election is “a final election for a political office with a limited list of candidates.”[13]

The Secretary of State is involved in all steps of the election cycle. Prior to any federal or statewide election (primary, runoff, or general), the political parties[14] whose candidates will appear on the ballot are required to certify their lists of candidates. The Secretary of State then certifies the parties’ certification. A certificate of recertification may be produced if the party needs to recertify a candidate due to legal circumstances that arise. An amended certification, on the other hand, is produced if the original certificate becomes inaccurate due to changes in circumstance. This could occur if a candidate drops out of the election or passes away, or if there was a party or candidate error in the first certification submission. Once the office has certified the certifications, then a vendor will print sample ballots. Sample ballots are printed prior to any election (primary, general, or runoff).[15]

Prior to a general federal or statewide election, the Secretary of State certifies independent candidates not associated with a political party, as well as third-party candidates. In order to appear on the ballot in a general election, an independent candidate must obtain a certain number of voter signatures. The number of voter signatures is identified by calculating a certain percentage of electors that voted in the last gubernatorial election for that electoral district. The specific percentage of electors depends upon the type of election which will take place.

After a primary federal or statewide election, the political parties will receive documentation of the results from both the Secretary of State and the probate courts in the counties where the election took place. The political parties use this documentation to produce certificates of results and certificates of candidates to appear in the general election (or the primary runoff election if applicable).[16]

After a general federal or statewide election, the probate courts in the counties where the election took place will send documentation of the results to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State Elections Division receives this documentation and compiles the election results. General election results are not declared to be official until canvassing is completed. In Alabama, “all returns of elections required by law to be sent to the Secretary of State must, within 22 days after an election, be opened, counted, and certified in the presence of the Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General.”[17] These three officials comprise the State Canvassing Board.

The right to vote has been extended to many additional groups of voters since the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited the government from denying a citizen the right to vote on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”[18] The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, prohibited the government from denying a citizen the right to vote on the basis of sex.

Alabama’s 1901 Constitution restricted suffrage to men who could pass literacy and property qualifications and pay an annual poll tax.[19] Many of these qualifications would later be forbidden under federal law; for instance, the court ruled in Guinn v. United States (1913) that literacy tests violated the 15th Amendment, and the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1964, prohibited the levying of poll taxes.[20]

Suffrage would continue to be restricted in Alabama and other southern states for more than half of the twentieth century. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 empowered the federal government to enforce provisions of the 15th Amendment. The Act’s provisions resulted in federal election oversight in the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia (as well as portions of California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and South Dakota). Most of these jurisdictions became subject to federal oversight through application of the Act’s coverage formula, which determined which jurisdictions required federal preclearance for election law changes unless they were subject to a separate court order. This provision remained in effect until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it to be unconstitutional in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).[21]

The Secretary of State provides, maintains, and administers “a nondiscriminatory, single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list.”[22] The Secretary employs a Supervisor of Voter Registration who is responsible for liaising between the Secretary of State and county boards of registrars on implementation of voter registration laws. The Secretary and the Supervisor of Voter Registration work closely with the State Voter Registration Advisory Board to ensure that the values of “honesty, fairness, and integrity in lists of qualified voters, the voter registration process, and the election process in the State of Alabama” are upheld.[23]

Alabama Act 88-873, currently codified as the Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-5-1 et seq. and also called the Fair Campaign Practices Act, requires candidates for office, political action committees, and elected officials to submit periodic reports to the Secretary of State. These filings primarily document campaign contributions and expenditures and are available for public inspection through the Secretary of State’s website.[24] 

The office is responsible for creating and maintaining the meeting files of the Alabama Electronic Voting Committee. The Committee examines and certifies electronic vote counting systems in a statutorily prescribed manner, which includes publicly examining systems, interviewing prospective vendors, reporting on systems, and certifying systems for usage in Alabama.[25]

Alabama Act 2011-673, currently codified as the Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-9-30, updated voter identification requirements during elections, requiring that voters must provide valid photo identification in order to vote. The Secretary of State issues “Alabama Photo Voter Identification Cards” at no cost to voters who lack other forms of photo identification. Cards contain the voter’s full legal name, date of birth, address, eye color, gender, height, and weight, and remain valid for “as long as the person resides at that same address and remains qualified to vote.”[26] The office operates a Photo Voter ID Mobile Unit which endeavors to visit all sixty-seven counties at least once annually.

The Alabama Legislature established the Fair Ballot Commission in April 2014 with the passage of Alabama Act 2014-399, the Alabama Informed Voter Act, codified as the Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-6-80, et seq. The Commission is charged to “provide to the public a fair and accurate explanation of what a vote for and what a vote against a statewide ballot measure represents.”[27] The Secretary of State has a seat on the Commission, and ballot statements approved by the Fair Ballot Commission are conspicuously published on the Secretary of State’s website.

The office also administers several federal programs related to election administration. In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which is intended “to establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections… [and] to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government.”[28]

The Secretary of State is the primary liaison between the federal government and the state of Alabama for the implementation of HAVA, as well as for the implementation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.[29] More specifically, the office is the designated administrator of the state’s HAVA funds. Between 2003 and 2021, Alabama received approximately $58 million in HAVA funds. Prior to the implementation of HAVA, each of Alabama’s sixty-seven counties used a different system to register its voters. HAVA funds have been utilized on improvements including, but not limited to, polling place renovation to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the purchase of cybersecurity systems and risk-mitigation products for the improvement of election security.

The U.S. Congress passed the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) in 1986. UOCAVA’s provisions apply to U.S. citizens who are active members of the Uniformed Services, the Merchant Marine, and the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Act also applies to these individuals’ eligible family members, as well as other U.S. citizens residing outside the United States.[30] UOCAVA provides the legal basis for these citizens’ absentee voting rights in federal elections.

The U.S. Congress expanded UOCAVA’s provisions in 2009 with its passage of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. Among other provisions, the MOVE Act requires states to transmit validly requested absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters no later than 45 days before a federal election unless the state has been granted an undue hardship waiver.[31] The Secretary of State works with absentee election managers throughout Alabama to ensure that elections comply with the provisions of UOCAVA and the MOVE Act.

Land Records

In March 1817, President James Monroe appointed John Coffee to be the Surveyor General of the northern Mississippi Territory, which included what is now Alabama.[32] After Alabama became a state, Coffee transferred his papers from the Land Office in Huntsville to the Secretary of State’s Office in Montgomery.[33] The Secretary of State has retained responsibility for the Surveyor General’s papers since then, and the Code of Alabama 1852 § 56 formally gave the Secretary of State the duty “to keep all books, maps, and other papers appertaining to the survey of any lands belonging to the state.” The Secretary of State maintains county-by-county tract books broken down by township, range, section, and quarter section. Original gov­ernment survey notes and township plats are also kept by the office.

**Explanatory Note: Tract books are government ledgers used to record transactions of surveyed public lands.[34] Public land surveys are recorded in the form of a grid system which uses township, range, section, and quarter section as units of measure.[35]

These duties have been further clarified in subsequent editions of the Code of Alabama. As of 2021, the Secretary of State makes the original land records accessible through an electronic document portal on its website. The paper land records are maintained by the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

**Explanatory Note: The Secretary of State acts as custodian for the original land survey records, created in the early 1800s, that subdivided land into parcels for sale to the public. Once a section of land transferred from public to private ownership, the land could be subdivided, sold, and resold. County probate offices are responsible for keeping records of these transactions.[36] In 1945, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources became responsible for leasing, selling, and maintaining records on land that is owned by the state.

Legislative Records

According to the Code of Alabama 1852 § 96, the Secretary of State’s office must maintain copies of legislative acts and resolutions “for the use of the executive offices, and the two houses of the general assembly.” The office is also responsible for distributing copies of the laws to a variety of government agencies, including, but not limited to, the other constitutional offices, supreme and circuit court judges, county probate judges, legislators, and county sheriffs’ offices. These duties have been further clarified in subsequent legislation.

Business Entity Filings

The Secretary of State has record keeping responsibilities pertaining to corporations. Legal entities that functioned as corporations have existed in Europe for centuries. Corporations became increasingly common during the colonial era, as European governments chartered entities like the Hudson’s Bay Company to spearhead their overseas expansion.[37]

**Explanatory Note: A corporation is a legal entity which is created by individuals, stockholders, or shareholders, but which operates independently from its founders. Corporations have many of the same legal rights as people; they may enter into contracts, sue and be sued, own assets, and borrow money from financial institutions.[38]

Beginning in the 1820s, proponents of Jacksonian Democracy began to criticize the perceived exclusivity of this framework, which seemed to accord unequal privileges to state-authorized corporations. Martin Van Buren and other politicians advocated for “general incorporation laws,” which would permit anyone to create a corporation so long as they fulfilled the specific criteria outlined in statute.[39] The oldest continuously operating corporation in Alabama dates from this period. Now headquartered in Birmingham, the jewelry store Bromberg’s was founded by Frederick Bromberg in Mobile in 1836.[40]

In Alabama, general incorporation laws are first described in the Code of Alabama 1852 Part 2 Title 2. The statute outlines specific criteria for the formation, operation, and dissolution of corporations in various industries, including banking, road construction, and manufacturing. Articles of incorporation “must be recorded in the office of the judge of probate of the county or counties in which such business is to be carried on.”[41] Subsequent revisions to the Code of Alabama expanded upon these regulations and generalized them to govern additional industries.

Alabama’s corporation law is periodically revised in accordance with the evolution of corporate law on a national scale. For example, Alabama Act 94-245 addressed limited liability corporations (LLCs) for the first time. In 1999, the Alabama Law Institute embarked upon a study of all business entity types with a goal of resolving inconsistencies in the legislation. The Institute’s findings led to the passage of Alabama Act 2009-513, which repealed the Code of Alabama 1975 Title 10 and replaced it with an updated Alabama Business and Nonprofit Entities Code (Title 10A). Most recently, Alabama Act 2019-94 updated the Alabama Business and Nonprofit Entity Code to conform with the American Bar Association’s Model Business Corporation Act’s 2017 revision. Among other changes, the 2019 act facilitated the Secretary of State’s implementation of a centralized, electronic filing system for corporate instruments.[42]

Historically, the Secretary of State’s role in the incorporation process was to receive and maintain business filings from county probate offices. With the Legislature’s passage of Alabama Act 2020-73, however, all business filings are filed directly with the Secretary of State after the effective date of January 1, 2021.

Uniform Commercial Code Filings

The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the rights of states to enact unique laws. A variety of legal issues transcend state lines, however, necessitating the adoption of a predictable, uniform set of laws across the country.

Uniform acts are collaboratively written model laws intended to facilitate the enactment of similar laws by separate states. The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) is one of several such uniform acts, first published in 1951 by the Uniform Law Commission with the goal of harmonizing the laws governing sales and other commercial transactions. As the Commission explains on its website, “because the UCC has been universally adopted, businesses can enter into contracts with confidence that the terms will be enforced in the same way by the courts of every American jurisdiction.”[43] The UCC serves a number of purposes and applies to most commercial transactions. Articles address the following subjects: sales of goods, leases of goods, promissory notes and checks, bank deposits, check collection processes, funds transfers, letters of credit, auctions and liquidations of assets, storage of goods, securities, financial assets, and secured transactions.[44]

Alabama adopted the Uniform Commercial Code in 1967 with the Legislature’s passage of Alabama Act 1967-549. The law has been periodically revised in accordance with recommendations from the Uniform Law Commission. For example, in 2001, the Legislature updated the statutory language surrounding secured transactions. Alabama Act 2004-524 added provisions related to electronic signatures in accordance with the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act.[45]

The Secretary of State’s main role within the UCC framework is to maintain UCC filings, which are used to perfect (reserve) the secured interest of the secured party in personal property collateral. UCC filings are liens placed on certain personal property, such as equipment, accounts receivable, etc., that normally cannot be titled or deeded, such as automobiles, aircrafts, boats, and real estate. The Secretary of State has been responsible for maintaining UCC filings since the law’s initial passage, but its record keeping practices have evolved in the intervening years from a manual filing system into a computer-automated electronic filing system.

Trademark, Trade Name, and Service Mark Filings

The Secretary of State also serves as a custodian for records pertaining to trademarks, trade names, and service marks. The first trademarks appeared in medieval Europe, where craftspeople used them to distinguish their authentic products from those produced by counterfeiters.[46] In the mid-nineteenth century, France and the United Kingdom were the first nations to enact comprehensive trademark laws.

**Explanatory Note: A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, or design that identifies goods and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. A trade name is an official name under which an individual or organization conducts business. A service mark is a type of trademark that distinguishes the source of services rather than the source of goods.[47]

The U.S. Congress created the first federal trademark system in 1870. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the system unconstitutional that same year, concluding that although Congress had the right to regulate trademarks, the system’s basis on the Copyright Clause was inherently unconstitutional. Congress subsequently enacted the Trademark Act of 1881, using the Commerce Clause as its basis. The 1905 revision of this Act, together with the Lanham Trademark Act of 1946, provides a framework for federal trademark registration into the present day.[48] Service marks, a relatively more recent concept, are also addressed in the Lanham Act. 

Alabama Act 1890-319 provided for the optional registration of marks on containers used in the manufacture, bottling, or selling of beverages. The act required that all applicants must file their marks with both the local probate office and the Secretary of State. The right to exclusive use of a trademark was granted in the Code of Alabama in 1923, and trademarks have been accepted under common law provisions since 1928.

[1] An Ordinance for the government of the Territory of the United States northwest of the River Ohio, July 13, 1787, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=8&page=transcript; U.S. Library of Congress, An Act for an amicable settlement of limits with the state of Georgia, and authorizing the establishment of a government in the Mississippi territory,1798, 5th Cong., 2nd sess., Ch. 27, accessed October 18, 2021, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=672.

[2] U.S. Library of Congress, An Act to establish a separate territorial government for the eastern part of the Mississippi Territory, 1817, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., Ch. 60, accessed September 28, 2020, http://memory.loc.gov/ cgibin/ampage?collId=llsl&file Name=003/ llsl003.db&recNum=412.

[3] Constitution of Alabama, August 2, 1819, accessed October 18, 2021, https://digital.archives.alabama.gov/digital/ collection/constitutions/id/41.

[4] Secretary of State website, accessed October 29, 2020, https://www.sos.alabama.gov/sos-office.

[5] Code of Alabama 1975 § 36-14-1.

[6] Technically, the Secretary is the custodian of the sealing device which is used to impress the Great Seal of Alabama upon executive records. Seals have been used to authenticate public documents since antiquity. See Mitchell et al.

[7] Code of Alabama 1975 § 36-20-70.

[8] Code of Alabama 1975 § 36-20-51 et seq.

[9] National Notary Association Staff, “Common Law Versus Civil Law Notaries,” National Notary Association, November 28, 2011, accessed October 29, 2020, https://www.nationalnotary.org/notary-bulletin/blog/2011/11/ common-civil-law-notaries.

[10] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-1-3.

[11] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-10-22 and § 17-10A-2, respectively.

[12] Probate judges are the chief election officials for countywide elections in Alabama. Within cities, the mayor and city clerk are the chief election officials.

[13] USAGov, “Definitions of Common Voting and Election Terms,” U.S. General Services Administration Technology Transformation Service, accessed October 30, 2020, https://www.usa.gov/voting-and-election-definitions.

[14] According to the Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-13-40, a political party is “an assemblage or organization of electors which… casts more than 20 percent of the entire vote cast in any county.”

[15] Clay S. Helms (Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Elections, Secretary of State’s Office), interview by the Alabama Department of Archives and History Records Management Section, November 5, 2019, Montgomery, AL.

[16] Helms, interview.

[17] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-12-17.

[18] U.S. Const. Amend. XV.

[19] Alabama Constitution of 1901, accessed October 18, 2021, https://digital.archives.alabama.gov/digital/collection/ constitutions/id/112.

[20] U.S. Const. Amend. XXIV.

[21] U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, “About the Division – Voting Section,” U.S. Department of Justice, 2020, https://www.justice.gov/crt/voting-section.

[22] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-4-33.

[23] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-4-34 through § 17-4-35.

[24] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-5-8.1 through § 17-5-10.

[25] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-7-23.

[26] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-9-30.

[27] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-6-81.

[28] “Help America Vote Act of 2002,” Pub L. No. 107-252.

[29] Code of Alabama 1975 § 17-4-60.

[30] Federal Voting Assistance Program, “The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act Overview,” U.S. Department of Defense, accessed October 29, 2020, https://www.fvap.gov/info/laws/uocava.

[31] U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, “Fact Sheet: Move Act.” U.S. Department of Justice, October 27, 2010, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fact-sheet-move-act.

[32] Herbert J. Lewis, “John Coffee,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, July 20, 2020, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama. org/article/h-3041.

[33] U.S. Department of the Interior, General Land Office, Manual of Surveying Instructions for the Survey of the Public Lands of the United States and Private Land Claims, January 1, 1902, https://www.ntc.blm.gov/krc/uploads/538/1902_ Manual_S_I.pdf.

[34] U.S. Department of the Interior, General Land Office, “General Land Office Records,” accessed November 17, 2020, https://glorecords.blm.gov/.

[35] Miriam Helen Hill, “Physical Geography I: Atmospheric Patterns and Processes and Physical Geography Laboratory I Class Homepage,” Jacksonville State University, 2020, http://www.jsu.edu/dept/geography/mhill/ phygeogone/phypagef.html.

[36] Code of Alabama 1975 § 12-13-1.

[37] Phillip I. Blumberg, The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law: The Search for a New Corporate Personality (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993), 22.

[38] Corporate Finance Institute, “What is a Corporation?” CFI Education, Inc., 2015, https://corporatefinanceinstitute. com/resources/knowledge/ finance/what-is-corporation-overview/.

[39] Susan Pace. Hamill, “From Special Privilege to General Utility: A Continuation of Willard Hurst’s Study of Corporations,” American University Law Review 49 no. 1 (1999): 99-101, https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1281&context=aulr.

[40] Bromberg’s, “About Bromberg’s,” Bromberg’s, https://brombergs.com/about-brombergs/.

[41] Code of Alabama 1852 Part 2 Title 2 Chapter 3 § 1474.

[42] Alabama Law Institute, “Report to the Alabama Legislature and Institute Membership 2018-2019,” Legislative Services Agency, February 2019, http://lsa.state.al.us/PDF/ALI/Docs/annual_report_ 2018.pdf.

[43] Uniform Law Commission, “Uniform Commercial Code Summary,” The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, accessed November 3, 2020, https://www.uniformlaws.org/acts/ucc.

[44] Uniform Law Commission, “Uniform Commercial Code Summary.”

[45] Pub L. 106-229, “Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act.”

[46] Gary Richardson, “Brand Names Before the Industrial Revolution,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, Working Paper No. 13930, April 2008, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/ w13930/w13930.pdf.

[47] U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, “Trademark, Patent, or Copyright?” U.S. Department of Commerce, September 25, 2020, https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-getting-started/trademark-basics/trademark-patent-or-copyright.

[48] U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Trademark Law: Federal Statutes, U.S. Department of Commerce. November 25, 2013, https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/trademarks/law/ Trademark_Statutes.pdf.

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