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The Latest on 'Disparaging' Names, Trademark Rights
The Washington Redskins football team has vowed to fight a federal district judge's recent order cancelling the team's federal trademark registrations as likely disparaging to Native Americans. Pro-Football Inc. (PFI) v. Blackhorse, 1:14-cv-01043. The team's planned appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit sets up a second showdown in federal appeals courts over the government's ability to cancel or deny trademark registrations based on content. A full sitting of the Federal Circuit ' a court that specializes in patent and trademark issues ' earlier this year agreed to hear a case about the Asian-American dance rock band named “The Slants,” whose trademark registration request was denied as derogatory to people of Asian descent.
The question of how the government reviews such trademark registrations could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, especially if the two appeals courts reach different conclusions. The last time the decades-long fight over the Washington football team's name reached the High Court, the justices in 2009 declined to review a ruling that favored the team. Pro-Football Inc. v. Harjo, 565 F.3d 880 (D.C. Cir. 2009).
In July 2015, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee in Alexandria, VA, upheld a decision last year by a patent and trademark administrative board that the Redskin trademarks violated federal law under the Lanham Act. The judge denied the football team's constitutional challenge to the section of the Lanham Act that addresses disparaging language.
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