The Washington Redskins organization has asked the Supreme Court to look into the cancellation of its trademark, which the team has been challenging in court since 2014.
The Redskins filed a petition Monday asking the high court to look over its case if it also takes up a similar one involving a band called The Slants, who have been fighting for the rights to use that name ever since the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected them.
Just hoping the Supreme Court will do the right thing here. https://t.co/680OeRdta8
— The Slants (@theslants) April 21, 2016
The band officially lost its trademark when a federal appeals court ruled in December that its name was offensive to Asian-Americans.
In that decision, the court pointed to a clause in the 1946 Lanham Act, America’s overarching patent statute, which states that trademarks can be cancelled if they “may disparage … persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.”
If the Supreme Court takes up The Slants’ case challenging that ruling, the Redskins argue, it should also hear their argument for why that clause was not a sufficient enough reason to cancel their trademark in 2014 after a group of activists convinced a trademark agency to put the team’s name back into the public domain due to its tendency to offend Native Americans.
Whether the court agrees to take the Redskins’ case or not, the Redskins would like it not to consider The Slants’ case and the potential unconstitutionality of that Lanham Act clause until the team’s appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond.
Redskins owner Dan Snyder has thus far refused to give in to public pressure to change the team’s name to something less controversial.
“We will never change the name of the team,” owner Dan Snyder told USA Today Sports in 2013. “As a lifelong Redskins fan, and I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season.”
