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Offensive Trademarks Must Be Allowed, Rules Supreme Court (arstechnica.com)
In a ruling that could have broad impact on how the First Amendment is applied in other trademark cases in future, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a federal prohibition on disparaging trademarks as a constitutional violation in a ruling involving a band called The Slants. From a report: The opinion in Matal v. Tam means that Simon Tam, lead singer of an Asian-American rock band called "The Slants," will be able to trademark the name of his band. It's also relevant for a high-profile case involving the Washington Redskins, who were involved in litigation and at risk of being stripped of their trademark. The court unanimously held that a law on the books holding that a trademark can't "disparage... or bring... into contemp[t] or disrepute" any "persons, living or dead," violates the First Amendment. Tam headed to federal court years ago after he was unable to obtain a trademark. In 2015, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in Tam's favor, finding that the so-called "disparagement clause" of trademark law was unconstitutional.
Don't know if The Slants meant their name as disparaging or not, but I'm glad that the Supreme Court actually took a unanimous stance in favor of free speech. In these days of extreme political correctness/social justice warrior activism, I am surprised it wasn't a 5/4 or 6/3 split. If you think I'm being dramatic, you can look to our English speaking neighbors to the north & east to see how bad it's getting.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
As soon as you do ban them, I'm going to protest that the supreme court has an offensive name (ok, not a trademark but still a name) because their assumption that they are supreme is very offensive to me.
There is ONLY speech....how you perceive it is completely your opinion.
This. And I've spent countless hours trying to bang it into peoples' heads.
We seem to be saying different things. Nothing you posted supports the assertion "hate speech does not exist." What you wrote supports a position "hate speech, like any other kind of speech, is protected by the first amendment."
Fine.
Just don't phrase that using the statement "does not exist."
The obvious sequel to this is for people who find these terms offensive to trademark them preemptively.
This has already been done with domain names for years. NAACP owns all the obvious racist domain names, and so on. Trademark law, like all traditional legal norms, is still catching up with the Internet.