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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

The Washington Redskins had already filed an Amicus brief in support of this change.

It seems weird to me that this became a free speech issue; I had always assumed trademarks were not a form of speech, just business protection (similar to a patent).

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The name of your business is indisputably considered speech. By providing trademarks to some business names and not others, the government is providing substantial commercial rewards to certain kinds of speech over others. It might still be a kind of business protection, but the issue is that they must provide that protection without regard to the speech of the applicants.

To be clear: very few people involved in the Redskins naming controversy think they should be prevented from using the name as a matter of law. It's not inconsistent to believe they have a first amendment right to name the team what they want but also that the name is offensive and should be changed (or even that the NFL is within its right to force such a change).

Very few "members of the public", maybe, but that doesn't really matter for much when the Patent & Trademark Office is attempting to strip them of their patent protection because they consider it a slur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins_trademark_...

That was compounded SCOTUS' rejection of the Redskins appeal, though this opinion should basically resolve the Redskins dispute anyway.

Trademarks are a form of censorship.

South Park had Cartman use the un-trademarkable version of the Redskins to achieve his personal business goals in an excellent season of South Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnK-jYzaWtw

That's quite a claim you just made. By the same reasoning, would you consider copyright censorship as well?

I have no doubt the Redskins could keep their name if they were actually comprised of Native Americans that wanted to call themselves that.

Then no more Dallas "Cowboys" either.

And let's not even get into the Boston "Celtics"...

Yeah, the police union will take that one and keep it for themselves faster then you can say donuts in the break room.

And clearly the Giants are the size of mere mortals.

Cowboys and Giants aren't a race. Celtics is not a racial slur.

Well, as this decision effectively strikes down the provision that the PTO was using to deny the Redskins trademark protection, they effectively just won the right regardless.

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