Being of European descent is an accident, being white is a choice. I refuse, YMMV.
Well, you used redskinsfacts.com. Can’t think of a more impartial site than that!
Oh, and we’ve been through all of this before. I’ll post it again since you didn’t see it the first time.
Your logic - like your citation - is suspect anyway. There are many, many, many more Native American groups who have had a problem with the name.
That’s why a federal judge ruled that the Patent and Trademark Office were correct when they deemed the term offensive. It is.
The team was founded under the name Boston Braves, same as the baseball club, and rented Braves Field as a playing site. The baseball club evicted them for non-payment of rent after one year,but after Marshall already had taken delivery of a new set of uniforms with an Indian head on them. The Red Sox agreed to take the football club as a tenant at Fenway Park, despite Marshall’s history (and presumably on stricter terms), but of course they had to drop the name Braves. However, Marshall had already taken delivery of a new set of uniforms with an Indian head on them, and rather than buy another set, he chose the first name that came to mind that matched.
Glad to clear that up for ya. BTW, all my Indian relatives think the R-word is an ethnic slur. Sure, many don’t, but is that what we should be reduced to? The point is still that the team is now pretty much forced to make a change for financial reasons (history comes around, huh?), and so they finally will.
What’s the standard of review? De novo or abuse of discretion?
Right, because there are no teams named after Europeans nationalities, or groups or events that primarily involved Europeans.
I, too, have felt undervalued as a white person. Only 99% of the culture is dedicated to the history and appearance and desires of people who looked like me, and dammit, I feel so alone.
Pretty funny since the court upheld it and now he wants to say nothing - even his own opinion on whether the term is racist (which he has no problem sharing before).
It’s mixed. The question of how disparaging the name is is a question of fact, and the ruling will be reviewed for an abuse of discretion, but the Redskins’ also raised constitutional issues – a First Amendment claim and a due process/takings clause claim tied how long ago the marks were registered and when this complaint was brought. Those are questions of law and will be reviewed de novo.
I didn’t think it was relevant before. I guess I felt chatty then. Today, I’m taciturn.
Well, we all have those days. Grab a six pack and go fishing, fix you right up!
This doesn’t make sense to me. If there’s no benefit of registering a trademark, then why would people register them? Clearly the loss of registration must mean something important.
This article which came out a year ago when the PTO first canceled their trademark registration, does a nice job of explaining the ramifications of their actions.
http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2014/06/19/3450729/redskins-trademark-decision-cost-lots-of-money/
The trademark affords you greater legal protection. And the penalties you can collect are also greater.
Of course there are benefits to registration. There are also costs to registration, such as time and fees. Many, many trademark holders never bother to register their trademarks either at the state or at the federal level, because those costs might not be worth the benefits.
The question is whether the Redskins have lost any trademark rights. The answer is no. They haven’t. Both federal and state law fully protect unregistered trademarks.
They have not lost trademark protections. They have not lost the right to stop infringement or counterfeits or knockoffs. The loss of registration might—might—make it slightly more expensive in term of time and attorney’s fees to take a case to court. It also might not be any more expensive for them in any particular case.
For an entity with such an extensive, public, recorded, known, national history of use in commerce of their trademark, the Redskins, especially, would have no problem enforcing their trademark rights against an infringer.
(I have heard an argument that having a trademark declared disparaging under Section 2(a) of the Lanham Trademark Act of 1946 would lead a court to rule that you could not bring an action for infringement of an unregistered trademark under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, but I have seen nothing that leads me to think that this is true.)
So why are they going to such expense to fight this since it might not cost them anything more just to say “fine, you made your ruling but we’re keeping the name?”
That is the point I have been making. That in my view this is largely a moral and public relations loss for them. The loss of registrations hurts them most not because of the actual legal consequences for their trademark rights, but because it’s another setback in their fight to resist public pressure.
And this is exactly the reason that the plaintiffs are pursuing their case, to win a symbolic victory over the Redskins with the secondary hope that it will be a step on the road to a name change resulting from public opinion.
Also because defiant and continued resistance energizes their supporters.
And also because it’s in Dan Snyder’s nature to resist everything all the time for as long as he can.
Snyder wants to stick it to his opponents as much as they want to stick it to him.
Yeah, I think there’s no way to make “a court says our name is offensive” into a good thing. Okay, maybe on Stormfront.
Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a somewhat similar case.
In In re Tam, they said:
They gone on to reverse the purportedly offensive trademark at issue in that case - “The Slants,” presumably a reference to Asians.
The reasoning here would, in my view, equally compel reversal in the Redskins’ case.
I can’t see that holding up (though I agree with the reasoning). The Act itself contravenes the bedrock principle of the First Amendment speech clause.
Is that so? The entire trademark statute?