Disparaging Marks and the First Amendment: The Washington Redskins Saga After Matal V Tam

36 questions on disparaging marks and the first amendment, answered and cited by the UpLaw editorial team.

• Can I now register any offensive trademark I want?
• Can I register a mark that names a living politician as political commentary?
• Could Congress bring back any version of the offensiveness bars?
• Did the Supreme Court decide the Redskins name was not disparaging?
• Did the Supreme Court strike down all content-based trademark bars?
• Did the Washington Redskins actually lose their trademarks?
• Does Matal v. Tam protect a parody that uses someone else's famous mark?
• Does the false-suggestion-of-connection bar in Section 2(a) still apply?
• How could a band's lawsuit save the football team's trademark registrations?
• How did the district court uphold the cancellation before Matal v. Tam?
• How do the three Supreme Court trademark speech cases compare?
• How was the Blackhorse petition designed to succeed where Harjo failed?
• If a founder wants to reclaim a slur as a brand name, what obstacles remain?
• If the team won in court, why did it change its name anyway?
• What did Iancu v. Brunetti decide?
• What did Matal v. Tam hold?
• What did Vidal v. Elster hold?
• What does federal trademark registration on the Principal Register actually provide?
• What does the Redskins saga teach about law versus market pressure on a brand?
• What else contributed to the Washington franchise's rebrand?
• What evidence did the TTAB rely on in the Blackhorse cancellation?
• What is laches and how did it defeat the first cancellation petition?
• What is the constitutional principle the trademark trilogy establishes?
• What is the difference between a viewpoint-based and a content-based trademark restriction?
• What is the difference between owning a trademark and registering one?
• What is the difference between the TTAB and a federal court in a trademark cancellation fight?
• What reasoning did the Court use to uphold the living-names clause?
• What should a founder do before launching a deliberately provocative brand?
• What was the Harjo case and why did it fail?
• What was the Lanham Act's disparagement clause?
• What was the legal test for whether a mark was disparaging?
• Which Section 2 registration bars survived Matal v. Tam and Iancu v. Brunetti?
• Who was Simon Tam and why did he apply to register THE SLANTS?
• Why did the government's “subsidy” argument for the disparagement clause fail?
• Why did the Supreme Court reject the argument that trademark registration is government speech?
• Why is refusing to register offensive marks viewpoint discrimination?