Eight sections of the bill, sometimes called the Trade Mark Act of 1870, introduced trademarks to United States federal law, although that portion was later deemed unconstitutional after the Trade-Mark Cases.

For copyrights, the Act codified the right of authors to make dramatizations and translations of literary works; copyright had previously been denied to translations by the holding in Stowe v. Thomas (1853), in which Harriet Beecher Stowe unsuccessfully sued for infringement over a translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin into German.

Sections 77 through 84 represented the first attempt by the United States of formally recognizing trademarks.

The Supreme Court determined that was inappropriate because "a trade-mark is neither an invention, a discovery, nor a writing, within the meaning of [the Copyright Clause]."

Congress passed the Trade Mark Act of 1881 to reintroduce trademarks, justified by the Commerce Clause instead.