Ruling lets team keep Redskins' trademark

A victory over the whiners for once:

"The Washington Redskins won another legal victory Friday in a 17-year fight with a group of American Indians who contend that the football team's trademark is racially offensive. The decision issued Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington doesn't address the main question of racism at the center of the case. Instead, it upholds the lower court's decision in favor of the football team on a legal technicality.

Redskins attorney Bob Raskopf said millions have been spent on the Redskins brand, and the team would have suffered great economic loss if it had lost the trademark registrations. "It's a great day for the Redskins and their fans and their owner Dan Snyder," he said.

The court agreed that the seven American Indians waited too long to challenge the trademark first issued in 1967. They initially won - the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office panel canceled the trademarks in 1999 - but they've suffered a series of defeats in the federal courts since then.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly overturned that decision in 2003 in part because the suit was filed decades after the first Redskins trademark was issued. The U.S. Court of Appeals then sent the case back to Judge Kollar-Kotelly, noting that the youngest of the plaintiffs was only 1 year old in 1967 and therefore could not have taken legal action at the time.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly issued a new ruling last summer that rejected that argument. She wrote that the youngest plaintiff turned 18 in 1984 and therefore waited almost eight years after coming of age to join the lawsuit.

The judge did not address whether the Redskins name is offensive or racist. She wrote that her decision was not based on the larger issue of "the appropriateness of Native American imagery for team names." A three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld that decision Friday.

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