I wrote about THE SLANTS trademark case a while ago on this blog. You may remember that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had affirmed the USPTO refusal to register the mark THE SLANTS because it is considered disparaging.
The Slants is a music group from Portland, Oregon. All of its members are Asian Americans. Its bassist, Simon Tam, filed a trademark application in 2011 for the mark THE SLANTS in international class 41 which covers “entertainment in the nature of live performance by a musical band.” But the USPTO refused to register the trademark as it considered the mark to be disparaging.
Indeed, Section 2(a) of the Trademark Act, prevents the registration of a trademark which “may disparage.” But on December 22, 2015, the Federal Circuit held that the disparagement provision of Section 2(a) of the Trademark Act violates the First Amendment and ruled in favor of Simon Tam.
I wrote about this case in the just published Transatlantic Technology Law Forum (TTLF) Newsletter. The Transatlantic Technology Law Forum is a joint initiative of Stanford Law School and the University of Vienna School of Law.
The TTLF blog post about this case is here. I hope you’ll find it of interest.
Picture is courtesy of Flickr user Kenneth Lu under a CC BY 2.0 license.
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