AMERICA protects the freedom of expression about as robustly as anybody. The courts that police this First-Amendment guarantee, though, often face dilemmas. On January 18th, in Lee v Tam, the justices considered a case involving “the first and only all-Asian American dance rock band in the world” and its quest dating back to 2011 to trademark its name, "The Slants", an appropriation of an anti-Asian epithet. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) told the band that a half-century-old law called the Lanham Act prohibited “scandalous, immoral or disparaging” trademarks. Then, citing a definition of “slants” from Urbandictionary.com, a list of ethnic slurs from Wikipedia and a slew of other evidence, the PTO denied The Slants’ application.
The Portland-based quartet fought the decision and won a judgment in 2015 from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a Washington, DC based court with jurisdiction over patent disputes. The ruling struck down the provision of the Lanham Act in question as a clear violation of the First Amendment: “The government cannot refuse to register disparaging marks because it disapproves of...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2iOeHni
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