Perhaps more importantly, the Redskins have been here before. In 1999, the patent office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled in a similar case brought by a group of Native Americans, and said that the team’s trademarks were disparaging.
IANAL (I am not a lawyer), so I’m curious. Does the fact that it was the Trademark Office who found it offensive change the burden of proof requirements for the football team from the burden in the Native American litigation?
“The fact is that, for the Blackhorse litigants, the actual evidentiary record in this case is not that strong, as the dissenting opinion [in the patent office’s ruling] pointed out,” Beebe said in an email to TPM. “Because of a quirk in federal trademark law, we’re concerned with whether the marks were disparaging at the times of registration, which were 1967, 1974, 1978, and 1990. How do you go back in time to show that by a preponderance of the evidence? It’s not easy, especially if a previous district court has already ruled that the evidence wasn’t sufficient.”
Except that in the previous court case, the reason they ultimately lost on appeal was that they were ruled to have waited too long to file suit, not because of the evidence. So as long as this was within some arbitrarily decided time of the 1990 registration, the fact that it relies on the same arguments shouldn’t matter. .
call me naive, or maybe I’m just too young or it’s because I’m not that into sports, but the idea never once crossed my mind that the name Washington Redskins referred to or derived from anything Native American.
I thought Josh’s article was good. However, it leaves out “warrior archetype” as a possible motivation for why these teams tried to appropriate Native American-ness in their self naming and self image.
I did some consulting work for the B.I.A. twenty years ago (and oh, man, have I been to some remote places). The Indian school teams are, indeed, always the Braves, the Chiefs, or the Warriors. Never the Redskins. No surprise there.
In any case, my vote for the D.C. football team? The Beltway Bandits.