Ethel mermania wrote:greed and death wrote:Laches is an equitable defense, where a defendant asserts a plaintiff waited to long to bring the case. In more traditional cases that would be in after the wrong of injury.
Since the trademark was registered many years ago there is only a certain amount of time after the plaintiff reaches the age of majority (18) that the plaintiff may bring the suit. Since Laches is Equitable the amount of time depends.
Solution for this second filing is to have Native Americans who just turned 18 file the suit.
what about the images, i would think the image is trademarked as well. the picture isnt inherently derogatory. did they strip the image as well?
Just the usage of the word Redskins.
Now I think there is a misunderstanding on what has been canceled. The trademark itself was not canceled the patent office lacks the authority to do that. The Registration of the trademark was cancelled. You do not need the registration to have a trademark. Registration gives you some very important legal rights, most relevant here is it creates a presumption that owner has a trademark.
I shall explain the diffrence with a before and after.
Before if the Redskins were suing someone for a trademark violation they could show the judge the registration and the judge would presume the redskins had established a trademark. All the redskins would have to prove then is that the trademark was violated.
Now the redskins would have to first establish they have a trademark then prove the trademark was violated. For smaller business entities the presumption makes a big difference in legal fees. For established firms like the redskins I doubt they will have much of a problem proving they hold a valid trademark.