Contrary to the CAW's assertions,
Friedman does not undermine this conclusion. In
Friedman, the Court upheld a complete ban on optometrists' use of trade names in practising their profession as furthering a substantial state interest in preventing deception of consumers. The Court underscored that “[h]ere, we are concerned with a form of commercial speech that has no intrinsic meaning” and only “ill-defined associations ... with price and quality.”
Friedman, 440 U.S. at 12–13, 99 S.Ct. at 895–96. In contrast, the terms regulated by
section 17508.5 may be imprecise, but they are not altogether fanciful or inherently uninformative. “Recycled”, for example, conveys at least a modicum of information informing the consumer that the product consists in some measure of reused resources, even if the source of recapture may be uncertain. In contrast, the trade names at issue in
Friedman consisted largely of more fleeting or at least subjective associations rather than anything resembling “intrinsic” meaning for purposes of the first factor of the test enunciated in that case for determining whether commercial speech merits First Amendment protection.