Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal trademark law banning offensive names is unconstitutional. The case involved an Asian-American rock group named The Slants. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office cited the law’s so-called “disparagement clause” as grounds to deny their application.
A month later, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has received nine applications seeking to register racially charged words and symbols for their products, including the N-word and a swastika. One application included an epithet for people of Chinese descent.
The Obama administration’s brief argued that if the Supreme Court struck down the “disparagement clause,” the PTO would be forced to trademark “the most repellent racial slurs and white-supremacist slogans.”
Trademark attorneys expect more filings by the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazi groups.
My thoughts? This is heartbreaking.
Be that as it may, it is high-time to apply registration laws to hate groups. Example: Labor unions were viewed as Communist collaborators in the 1940s. A major labor law was amended to make unions suable in federal courts, and hold them responsible for damages.
If the KKK and their ilk want federal protection of their identities, fine— let’s pass a law that makes them suable in federal courts for damages they cause, similar to this labor law (Labor-Management Relations Act, Section 301).
For now, only individuals can be sued, not organizations. This explains why hate groups almost always avoid lawsuits, judgments, and restraining orders.
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