This decision is absurd on its face. Millions of Muslims protested against Islamization last summer, and toppled the regime that was fostering that Islamization. These people were mostly Muslims. Were they all “anti-Muslim bigots” intent on “disparaging Islam”?
Pamela Geller comments here. And Eugene Volokh in the Washington Post writes that this decision was unconstitutional:
My tentative view is that the general exclusion of marks that disparage persons, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols should be seen as unconstitutional. Trademark registration, I think, is a government benefit program open to a wide array of speakers with little quality judgment. Like other such programs (such as broadly available funding programs, tax exemptions, or access to government property), it should be seen as a form of “limited public forum,” in which the government may impose content-based limits but not viewpoint-based ones. An exclusion of marks that disparage groups while allowing marks that praise those groups strikes me as viewpoint discrimination. But I’m not sure that courts will ultimately see this my way; so far they haven’t been inclined to do so, precisely because the exclusion of a mark from federal registration leaves people entirely free to use the mark.
“Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds Denial of ‘Stop the Islamisation of America’ Trademark,”American Freedom Law Center, May 14, 2014:
Please TweetMeWashington, D.C. (May 14, 2014) — Yesterday, in an opinion that relied upon irrelevant essays and anonymous comments posted on blogs, a three-judge panel in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board’s (TTAB) denial of the trademark application for “Stop the Islamisation of America” or “SIOA.” In its ruling, the court agreed with the TTAB and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that the trademark disparaged Muslims and linked them to terrorism. http://goo.gl/6YCccx
