Ok, so this happened...

[vorlon13]

anyone hear about the 'Slants' ruling today ?

on Fox News right now

LA Times update on this interesting and probably controversial ruling:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorial...story.html


excerpt:

In a reassuringly sweeping decision, the Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal law prohibiting the registration of trademarks that may disparage individuals, institutions, beliefs or national symbols, or “bring them into contempt or disrepute.”
The 8-0 ruling was a victory for the Slants, an Asian American dance-rock band that chose its name as a way to redeem a word traditionally regarded as a racial slur, only to be blocked from trademarking its brand by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Congress barred the registration of disparaging trademarks in 1946, presumably to avoid giving the government’s imprimatur to offensive slogans.

Writing for the court, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the “disparagement clause” in trademark law “offends a bedrock 1st Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.”
Alito’s opinion rightly makes clear that the 1st Amendment is violated not only when the government prevents or punishes speech, but when it conditions benefits — such as the economic advantages that flow from federal trademark registration — on the content of speech. We don’t want the government deciding what brands and slogans are too offensive to be trademarked any more than we want the government deciding which shows are too disrespectful to be televised or which political treatises are too radical to be published.