Federal judge orders cancellation of Redskins’ trademark registrations

[|Montana Bengal|]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/judge-upholds-cancellation-of-redskins-trademarks-in-a-legal-and-symbolic-setback-for-team/2015/07/08/5a65424e-1e6e-11e5-aeb9-a411a84c9d55_story.html?tid=sm_tw

 

Federal judge orders cancellation of Redskins’ trademark registrations

 

By Ian Shapira July 8 at 9:43 AM 

 

The Washington Redskins lost their biggest legal and public relations battle yet in the war over its mascot after a federal judge in Northern Virginia on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of the NFL team’s federal trademark registrations, which have been opposed for decades by many Native Americans who feel the moniker disparages their race.

 

The cancellation doesn’t go into effect until the Redskins have exhausted the appeals process in the federal court system. But even if the Redskins ultimately took the case to the Supreme Court and lost, the team can still use “Redskins” and seek trademark protections under state law. The team has argued, however, that a cancellation of its trademarks could taint its brand and remove legal benefits that would protect against copycat entrepreneurs.

 

U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee’s decision affirmed an earlier ruling by the federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Last year, the appeal board declared in a 2-to-1 vote that the team’s moniker is offensive to Native Americans and therefore ineligible under the Lanham Act for status in the federal trademark registry. The appeal board had been petitioned by five Native American activists, including Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo Nation member from Arizona who is well-known for leading massive protests against the team outside stadiums wherever it plays.

 

[U.S. patent office cancels Redskins trademark registrations, saying name is disparaging to Native Americans]

 

The Redskins tried to overturn the appeal board’s ruling in August by suing Blackhorse and the four other Native American activists in federal court in Alexandria, Va. The team argued that the Lanham Act conflicted with its First Amendment rights. It also contended that Blackhorse didn’t prove that enough Native Americans opposed the name at the time the team registered its trademarks in 1967, 1974, 1978 and 1990.

 

A Washington Redskins spokesperson said the team is reviewing the decision and considering its legal options.

 

Jesse Witten, one of the attorneys for the Native Americans, celebrated the judge’s ruling.

 

“This is a huge victory. Getting this ruling from a U.S. District judge is a watershed event,” Witten said, adding that he doesn’t expect the war to be over anytime soon. “The team has been fighting this case so hard and leaving no stone unturned and scorching every square inch of earth that it’s hard to imagine they will not appeal.”

 

The Redskins have been waging a legal war to defend their federal trademark registrations for more than two decades. The fight began in 1992, when a group of Native Americans led by Suzan Shown Harjo filed a petition with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to strip the team’s name of their registrations. Seven years later, the panel ruled in Harjo’s favor.

 

But the Redskins appealed in federal court, winning on the grounds that Harjo and the other Native Americans didn’t produce enough evidence showing the name was insulting and that they waited too long after turning 18 years old — legally adults — to claim the name is offensive.

 

Before that case was lost, Blackhorse and four other young Native Americans from Florida, Utah and Oklahoma had filed their own petition with the trademark appeal board in August 2006.

 

Last year, the appeal board ruled in Blackhorse’s favor, voting to cancel the Redskins’ trademark registrations in a decision that reinvigorated the movement against the name. There have been rallies at Redskins games across the country led by Blackhorse. And members of Congress proposed legislation to strip the NFL of its nonprofit status if the league continued using the name. (The league announced in April it was stripping itself of its tax-exempt structure.)

 

In its ruling last year, the appeal board asserted that “Redskins” offends a large number of Native Americans and is therefore ineligible for trademark registration under the federal Lanham Act, which bars protection for names that “may disparage” or bring people into contempt or disrepute. The board based its vote on several factors, such as that “Redskins” is a dictionary-defined slur and the National Congress of American Indians declared the name racist.

 

When the team sued Blackhorse and the four other Native American activists in federal court, seeking to overturn the trademark board’s decision, it made several arguments. It argued that U.S. patent officials had infringed on the Redskins’ free speech rights and taken away a valuable commodity “without just compensation,” according to court documents, because the organization has invested millions of dollars in the use, promotion and protection of its trademarks.

 

The Redskins lawyers say in court papers that the team’s value increased from $741 million in 2000 to $2.4 billion by August 2014, with its brand management valued at $214 million.

 

But the Native Americans’ attorneys argued in court that the appeal board’s decision and the Lanham Act do not violate the First Amendment. They cited a fresh Supreme Court ruling in June that declared Texas didn’t violate the First Amendment when it banned specialty license plates proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans bearing the Confederate flag.

 

[Does Supreme Court ruling on Confederate license plates bolster ruling in Redskins trademark case? ]

 

The Supreme Court held that states don’t have to issue speciality license plates whose messages they don’t want to endorse but that would nonetheless carry the government’s imprimatur. The Native Americans’ attorneys argued the same theory holds true in this case: The trademark office doesn’t have to hand out registrations to entities whose names they find offensive but that would still carry the federal government’s stamp of approval.

 

[|RayDoggBengal|]

This is going to drag out all year.