The United States Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) will decide whether a federal law’s prohibition of disparaging trademarks violates the First Amendment. A lower court had ruled that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) ran afoul of the First Amendment when it turned down an Asian band’s trademark application for the name “The Slants.”
The band’s case is potentially significant to the Redskins pending trademark case because each involve the same First Amendment issue. Both matters are governed by the Lanham Act, a federal statute which establishes a national system for registering and protecting trademarks. The Act, however, forbids the registration of trademarks that disparage others.