CMC White Fence Post Position

Non-Traditional TMs
Written By Justin Powley
Cartoon stick figure cowboy in front of a wire fence with white painted posts — representing a blog post about the CMC White Fence Post position mark trademark registration.

Trademark: CMC White Fence Post Position

First Used: 1919

First Registered: 1920

Current Owner: CMC STEEL FABRICATORS, INC. [1]

Trademark Type:  non-traditional trademark; trade dress; position mark

Primarily Associated With: metallic fenceposts [2]

Brief (and likely incomplete) History [3]:

The CMC White Fence Post position mark is a significant piece of trademark history – it is one of the oldest, still active position mark registrations in the United States (together with other old fence post trademarks, including the Keystone Red Brand Fencing position mark and the CHS Aluminum Fence Post position mark)!

Commercial Metals Company (CMC) began in 1915 as a small scrap metal business in Dallas, Texas. Over the next century, it grew from a regional recycling operation into a major steel manufacturer, recycler, fabricator, and construction-products company. Today, CMC produces steel products used in construction and infrastructure, including rebar, merchant bar, wire rod, fence posts, and related fabricated products. Its fence-post business manufactures American-made steel T-posts from recycled steel and forms part of CMC’s broader role supplying practical steel products for farms, ranches, roads, buildings, and other everyday infrastructure.

Today, CMC owns two position mark registrations for fence posts. The CMC White Fence Post position mark [4] describes coloring a short portion of the upper end of the post white, and was first used in 1919 and registered in 1920. The CMC Gray and Forest Green Fence Post position mark [5] covers coloring of a short portion of the upper end of a fence post in a dull, non-reflective gray, the remainder of the post being forest green, and was first used in 1978 and registered in 1983.

Copyright © 2026 by Illustrated IP, LLC. All rights reserved.

[1] CMC, COMMERCIAL METALS COMPANY, https://www.cmc.com/en-us.

[2] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 136,743, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=71131622&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[3] About CMC, CMC, available at https://esg.cmc.com/about/who-we-are/;
CMC – A History of Commitment, YOUTUBE, posted February 9, 2026, and available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0xAF1NDgVM; History of CMC (Commercial Metals Company), STEEL ON THE NET, available at https://www.steelonthenet.com/history/cmc.html.

[4] Id. at 2.

[5] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,239,954, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=73328096&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

Justin Powley
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