Pamela Geller has a report on yesterday’s hearing:
We just concluded our oral argument before the US Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Trial & Appeal Board in a very crowded courtroom. Apparently this case has generated a good deal of interest in the US Patent and Trademark office. This is the last administrative step, following the USPTO’s refusal to register our trademark, “Stop the Islamization of America.” The USPTO had rejected SIOA’s trademark because it found it “disparaging” to Muslims. We argued that no law-abiding Muslim could possibly be disparaged by a trademark that reflected our goal to “stop” the Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization jihad, which is what we proved that “Islamization” means. More here.
David Yerushalmi, co-founder and senior counsel to the American Freedom Law Center, argued before the TTAB on our behalf today. There was something special about today’s argument, not simply because the “senior attorney” for the USPTO’s office, who handled the examination and rejection, appeared as the USPTO’s attorney of record (not the examining attorney of record, as is typical), and not simply because the room was packed with USPTO employees in the audience. The oral argument was special because the USPTO had no real legal or factual arguments, but instead made reference to vague and scary “geopolitical concerns and realities” of Islam and such “loaded terms” as “Stop the Islamization of America.”
At the conclusion of the oral argument, the chief judge commended our legal counsel on an “extremely well argued” hearing.
Truth
is, most of these administrative appeals are rubber stamps which the
applicant, AFDI, must then appeal to the federal circuit. You can bet we
are ready.The irony of all this is the sharia compliant rejection of our trademark application illustrates the chilling fallout of the”islamization of America.”