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Post by Rich Fisher on Nov 17, 2009 10:17:37 GMT -4
The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a group of Native mericans who think the name of the NFL's Washington Redskins football team is offensive. The high court on Monday turned away an appeal from Suzan Shown Harjo. That ends the latest round in the 17-year court battle between the Redskins and a group of American Indians who want them to change their name. Harjo and her fellow plaintiffs have been working since 1992 to have the Redskins trademarks declared invalid. They initially won -
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office panel canceled the trademarks in 1999. But U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly overturned the ruling in 2003 in part because the suit was filed decades after the first Redskins trademark was issued in 1967.
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Post by deputy on Nov 17, 2009 10:30:08 GMT -4
Good
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Post by shadow1 on Nov 17, 2009 14:25:36 GMT -4
Redskins and the name have been around for 76 years - time for Ms. Harjo and her group to get over it. The only unfortunate part is that Danny Snyder continues to make his money off the trademark.
Notwithstanding the protests of activists, a 2002 poll commissioned by Sports Illustrated found that 75% of those Native Americans surveyed had no objection to the Redskins name.The results of the poll have been criticized by Native American activists, who of course have their own bias on the issue,due to Sport's Illustrated's refusal to provide polling information (i.e. how participants were recruited and contacted, if they were concentrated in one region, if one ethnic group is over represented and the exact wording and order of questions).
But in 2004, a poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania essentially confirmed the prior poll's findings, concluding that 91% of the American Indians surveyed in the 48 states on the mainland USA found the name acceptable and setting out in detail the exact wording of the questions.
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