[WASHINGTONTIMES] The recent decision by an obscure administrative law board to cancel the Washington Redskins' trademark registrations came despite the fact the agency hadn't received a single letter from a member of the public complaining about the team's name, records show.
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which is part of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, ruled last month that the name was disparaging to American Indians. The team is appealing that decision.
Politicians, including President B.O., have waded into the team name controversy, with many saying the team should change its name. But despite widespread media attention and a legal fight that goes back more than a decade, the USPTO recently acknowledged there's hardly been an avalanche of public complaints filed with the agency.
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Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
PTO employee here. The "obscure administrative law board" is the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, a federal court. This wasn't agency rulemaking open to public comment. It was a dispute was between two private parties, the challenger having standing under the Lanham Act, under which the government can decline to extend trademark protections to offensive or disparaging marks. Much like state DMVs will not issue offensive or obscene vanity plates.
Interestingly:
In 1999, the TTAB issued a decision in which the trademark of the Washington Redskins football team was canceled under this provision, based on the claim that the name Redskins was disparaging to Native Americans.
On appeal to the federal district court and then to [Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court], the TTAB's decision was reversed in 2005 in Pro-Football, Inc. v. Harjo as the laches defense as applied to the particular plaintiffs who brought the complaint was not considered. However, this case was ultimately dismissed when remanded to the District Court.
Since the evidence was weak, the TTAB decision will almost certainly be appealed and reversed again. And hopefully dismissed with prejudice.
Funny how the government can decline to enforce "disparaging" marks, yet cannot bar vexatious litigants from using the courts to engage in harassment and lawfare.
#2
They started out as the Boston Braves. Their coach was a native American. He didn't object.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/03/2014 8:07 Comments ||
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#3
And yet the Treasury keeps printing and coining money with slaveholders on them. How offensive is that to another minority? BTW, the natives of the (NY) Finger Lakes region do find the paper with Washington offensive. Something to do with some of their ancestors joining the British effort on Fort Stanwix resulting in George ordering a 'scorched earth' retaliation campaign they remember to this day.
#5
A list of other sports teams with Indian-like names: Names of sports teams. I hope that I haven't inadvertently planted the idea of other work to do by the Feral government for years to come--or God forbid created another agency or two. I don't know what they will do about Mexico's and Canada's teams with Indian-like names. Probably work for the State Department's negotiations and new treaties.
#7
Careful Besoeker, you might get your front door kicked down at 4:00 a.m. by a SWAT team from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and then Lois Lerner might show up.
#8
Well the government needs to give its PR department (the MSM) something to write stories about. Otherwise all those nasty ones like the border chaos, IRS, etc. might be ran. No one wants that. Do they?
[ONLINE.WSJ] New York's top court struck down a law that made cyberbullying a crime, in what had been viewed as a test case of recent state and local statutes that target online speech.
The New York Court of Appeals, in a 5-2 ruling, held on Tuesday that the 2010 Albany County law prohibited a vast swath of speech "far beyond the cyberbullying of children," in violation of the First Amendment.
The court's ruling could stand as a guidepost for other state high courts hearing challenges to such laws, as well as for states and localities considering criminal penalties for cyberbullying, legal experts said. Besides Albany, four other New York counties and more than a dozen states, including Louisiana and North Carolina, have similar laws.
The Albany law made it a crime to electronically communicate "private, personal, false, or sexual information," intended to "harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate, or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm on another person" for no legitimate purpose.
Cohoes High School student Marquan W. Mackey-Meggs was the first to be charged under the law, after the then-15-year-old created a Facebook page in 2010 called "Cohoes Flame" and posted photos of other teenagers with captions that included graphic and sexual comments, according to court documents. He pleaded guilty, on the condition that he could challenge the constitutionality of the law.
Judge Victoria Graffeo, writing for the majority, described the posts as "repulsive and harmful" but declined the county's request to uphold the law in a form that would have barred narrow categories of electronic communications, including sexually explicit photographs and private or personal sexual information, sent with the intent to harm.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2014 00:00 ||
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The Albany law made it a crime to electronically communicate "private, personal, false, or sexual information," intended to "harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate, or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm on another person" for no legitimate purpose. Good decision. I would think that much of this is covered under other laws such as slander and libel laws. You can not enact a law that is going to protect people from the way they are going to feel about something. Words such as "harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate, or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm" are vague, fuzzy and otherwise meaningless; they are based on however you "feel" about what is being said. Some people may be very sensitive to such words whereas others just let the words just roll off their backs. Not a way to make laws.
#2
Actually I think the reason it got struck down is more the left is afraid of it being used against them, given their normal mode of operation in regards to behavior online.
Blood Feud, Ed Klein's new book on the Clintons and the Obamas currently rocketing to the top of the Amazon best seller list even before its official publication day, is a lurid, irresponsible work of yellow journalism filled with suppositions, inaccuracies, myriad anonymous sources, made-up dialogue and (often extreme) bias.
In other words, it is essentially like your average front page story in the New York Times.
But unlike the Times, Klein gets it essentially right about his subject "-- the Clintons and the Obamas despise each other.
And unlike the Times, Blood Feud is a compulsive read. I dare you to put it down.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2014 00:00 ||
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This entire debate is not about fences, or illegals, or helpless children. The issue at hand is DRUGS! Drugs coming into America and money going out. Narcotics enterprises are the life blood and 'coin of the realm' of both urban America and the wealthy Hollywood and political elite.
Does anyone really think that the legalization of the gateway drug marijuana in our cities and states, or Toronto Mayor Rob Ford or a detached thinker like our 'Crack Smoker in Chief' are societal anomalies? This is a business, and business is booming.
#3
That's right, and by extension, we should deploy the Secret Service to the border, as well. Although, I don't think there's enough hookers between Nuevo Laredo and Mexicali to service support a full deployment of agents.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
07/03/2014 7:30 Comments ||
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Canada not such a problem. However, it required $20m to catch 4 illegals. U.S. Immigration.
[HOUSTON.CBSLOCAL] Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he wants to know why the immigrants he turns over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement keep coming back.
"I want an explanation and investigation as to why 3,800 of the people in my jails that are charged with state and local crimes are here illegally," Arpaio told Newsmax TV. "We turn them over to ICE and they keep coming back over and over again."
Arpaio stated that he has sent a letter to Homeland Security demanding an answer.
"How come they're not deported, or if they are, why do they keep coming back across the border?" Arpaio questioned.
More than 52,000 unaccompanied children have been detained after crossing the Texas-Mexico border since October in what President Barack Obama Because I won... has called a humanitarian crisis. Many of the migrants are under the impression that they will receive leniency from U.S. authorities.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2014 00:00 ||
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Make the organ donors or start executing them as terrorists. Once word gets out, they'll stop coming back.
No, I have no mercy for people invading my country.
Or rather, I have enough mercy to not be at the Vlad the Impaler option yet.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[WASHINGTONTIMES] The recent decision by an obscure administrative law board to cancel the Washington Redskins' trademark registrations came despite the fact the agency hadn't received a single letter from a member of the public complaining about the team's name, records show.
If Besoeker's famous 'Prawn and Rice Peri Peri' recipe shall not be altered in any way. Go ahead.... SUE ME ! 
