The business-law issue of whether and when a corporate defendant is considered distinct from its affiliated entities emerged Wednesday at the U.S. Supreme Court, with the justices confronting whether an affiliate's revenue can be part of a judge's calculation of the remedy for the corporation's infringement of a trademark.

Attorney Thomas Hungar, pressing the infringement appeal of a commercial real estate firm, urged the justices to apply "the presumption of corporate separateness" in their consideration of the breadth of the Lanham Act's reference to a "defendant's profits" in the trademark law's remedial provision.