NFL Team Can Keep 'Redskins' Trademark

Yahoo! News (AP) ^ | 10/1/2003 | Sam Hananel

[Pyro7480]

NFL Team Can Keep 'Redskins' Trademark

By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A federal judge has overturned a ruling revoking the Washington Redskins trademark, finding there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the name is disparaging to American Indians.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the ruling in connection with a 1999 decision by a panel of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But she also made clear that her ruling does not address the issue of whether the name "Redskins" actually is offensive to Indians.

Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson said the team hadn't reviewed the entire ruling but "from what we've been told by our attorneys, we are pleased."

If the team lost, it could have been stripped of the exclusive rights to market the Redskins name.

The lawsuit began in 1992 when seven American Indians, led by Suzan Shown Harjo, asked the trademark office to cancel six trademarks containing the word "Redskin." In 1999, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board granted a petition to cancel the team's trademark registrations because of a federal law, the Lanham Act, prohibiting registering "disparaging" names.

In her 84-page decision, issued late Tuesday, Kollar-Kotelly also found that the plaintiffs waited too long to make their claims under the law, which was in effect when the Redskins trademarks were registered in 1967.

[SAJ]

The complaints, if any, were minor. The football team was originally named the Braves, after the baseball Boston Braves and because the football team also played at old Braves Field. The owner got p.o.ed a couple of years later and moved the team to Fenway AND changed the nickname to ''Redskins'', generally to spite the baseball team. This historical process was not entirely dissimilar from the origin of the nickname ''Bears'' for the Chicago football team, and has further similarity to the baseball/football NY Giants.

The ''offensiveness'' of the nickname is of entirely recent origin, and is a bunch of manufactured kwapola.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

P.S. To qualify my remarks: I don't think that the group of individuals who came up with the team name "Washington Redskins" intended it to be disparaging. I just can't imagine that.

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

blacks "BlackSkins", or asians "YellowSkins",

Actually the politically correct term for them is "peoples of color." That's offensive to me. I have color in my skin. I shoul dsue the govt. for every document with that phrase in it.

[myself6]

"the courts have spoken"

So let it be written, so let it be done?

Would you go along with ANY ruling the court put out?

[G L Tirebiter]

the plaintiffs waited too long to make their claims under the law, which was in effect when the Redskins trademarks were registered in 1967.

Seems remarkable that the trademark was unprotected until '67. They were such losers in the 50's & 60's that there wasn't much of a threat.

I love to see an Eddie Lebarron type QB again though I suppose Flute was about his size.

[jpl]

What's so funny about this is that the sanctimonious former governor of Maryland, Parris Glendening, effectively banned all Indian team names from high schools in the state. Yet he never had a single word to say about the Redskins, who play in their games in Maryland.

[HenryLeeII]

We should just refer to them as Gregg Easterbrook at ESPN.com does...the "Potomac Drainage Basin Indiginous Persons"

For some unknown reason I read Easterbrook's column. One problem with his moniker, which is typical of so many smug, pseudo-intellectual leftists such as he is: the term 'indiginous person' refers to a person who is native to an area. Indians are not native to the D.C. region any more. For the past three hundred years the indiginous people have been white and black, and more recently Asian and Hispanic.

Also, if he won't refer to them as 'Washington' because they actually play in Maryland, then why doesn't he rename Dallas as Irving, Buffalo as Orchard Park, etc., as he has with the Giants and Jets (Jersey/A and Jersey/B, respectively)? But I will accept his re-naming of the Rams as Les Mouflons and the Titans as the Flaming Thumbtacks.

[mil-vet]

So I should be upset if somebody calls me a white guy? Not meaning to disparage, but methinks this is far less than a tempest in a teapot! What an insignificant thing to be upset about - LOL!

If someone is black, white, red, yellow or brown (the five anthropologically defined "race" groupings), aren't they black, white, red, yellow or brown? What would they like to be called, if not black, white, red, yellow or brown?

Maybe lifestyle should be the identifying factor, so we can say socialist liberal pondscum, or faggot, or racist, or criminal, or (worse yet) politician, or WHAT????

Perhaps the underlying political correctness, PC being an abomination in its own right, is the real problem. It's the same dufus idiocy which prevents profiling when profiling is so obviously applicable (let's see, should I search the little old 80 y-o white grandmother or the male of mideastern decent between 17 and 40 years of age?).

Hmmmmm!

[discostu]

Which brings up the other point: with no official presence inside the beltway (team offices, practice field and playing field are all elswhere) should the 'Skins be allowed to be called the Washington anything?

[HEY4QDEMS]

The ''offensiveness'' of the nickname is of entirely recent origin

The publicity surrounding the ''offensiveness'' of the nickname is of entirely recent origin

[aREDSKIN]

Your screen name is apt.

[HEY4QDEMS]

Raging Rapists
How bout "Pirates", "Buccaneers","Raiders"

[usadave]

This has much more to do with economic and political clout than it does with justice. "Redskin" is racist in any context.

So are the labels "White" and "Black" when they are used by government agencies to classify European-Americans and African-Americans.

[LayoutGuru2]

Welcome to FR.

[vin-one]

The only thing disparaging about the Redskins, is

Their record over the past 9 years

Now we are 3-1
Hail to the Redskins
Hail Victory,
Braves on the War path
Fight for Ole D.C.

[SAJ]

I'd be very willing to wager that people in Boston in 1933 had just a little bit more to worry about and to be ''offended'' about than the nickname of a sports team.

A little matter called the Great Depression, for one thing.

[Leroy S. Mort]

And if they created a professional team named after one of those slurs, I would expect the court to thry and block them.

Atlanta never had a problem with this one.

[dmz]

The Franklin Indians still exist in Baltimore County. You overstate the influence Parris had.

[Recovering_Democrat]

For Gods sakes. Remember when the courts were concerned with the laws being broken instead of people's feelings being hurt?

[SAJ]

Just barely.