Pro-Football, Inc. v. Harjo, 415 F.3d 44 (D.C. Cir. 2005), is a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia considered the decision of the United States Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) to cancel the registration of the Washington Redskins football team, based on the claim that the name was disparaging to Native Americans. The Court of Appeals did not actually reach the merits of the TTAB's decision; it sent the case back to the trial court for consideration of a procedural issue.
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In 1992, activist Suzan Harjo led seven Native Americans in petitioning the TTAB to cancel six trademark registrations owned by Pro-Football, Inc., the corporate entity that operates the Washington Redskins. The TTAB granted the petition, and the owner appealed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, which overturned the cancellation on two grounds. The District Court found that the TTAB lacked substantial evidence to find disparagement, and that the petition was barred by laches - an equitable legal theory which prohibits a party from waiting so long to file a claim that it becomes unfair to the other party. The Redskins had registered their marks as early as 1967 - when the youngest of the complainants was one year old. The complainants then appealed this decision to the Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals was presented with several questions:
The Court of Appeals upheld the District Court's holding that laches was a valid defense in a disparagement case. It vacated the District Court's application of laches to one of the complainants, however, and remanded the case for further consideration on that issue only. It retained jurisdiction over the rest of the case (including the question of whether the TTAB's decision had been supported by substantial evidence), pending the District Court's resolution of the laches issue.
The Native Americans claimed that laches should not apply to a disparagement claim at all, because the law specifies that such a claim can be brought "at any time". The Court rejected this, noting that other language in the same statute specifically permits equitable defenses, and laches is such a defense. The Court then considered the applicability of laches to the case at hand. Because the defense depends on the laxity of the plaintiff in pursuing his rights - which can not effectively be pursued until the plaintiff has reached the age of majority - the Court found that the defense could not be applied against the one plaintiff who had been a minor until recently, and therefore that the plaintiff had not slept on his rights.
The Court acknowledged the assertion by the owner that this finding would leave trademarks disparaging a group with a constantly expanding population "perpetually at risk":
The case was remanded to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for further proceedings. In July 2008, that court found that the doctrine of laches was still applicable to the particular plaintiffs in this case, because the youngest plaintiff had turned 18 eight years before the case was filed.[1] On November 16, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court declined certiorari and refused hear the Native American group's appeal.[2]