This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, June 19th, 2014. I'm Caleb Brown.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says the Washington Redskins shouldn't get to keep their

trademark name because they call it disparaging.

What might this mean for free speech, an intellectual property more broadly?

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, weighs in.

The Patent Trademark Office is seeing this controversy for the second time. This is a set of lawsuits that's been going on for more than 20 years

and the Trademark Act of 1946

provides that the trademark registration should be

counseled if it quote may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with

persons living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national

symbols, or bring them into contempt or disrepute."

And what this means is not entirely clear, but more than 20 years ago one group of

Native Americans sued saying that the name of the Washington Redskins team was unduly disparaging,

brought Native Americans into disrepute.

And they won on the substance the first time, this is the second time that the Patent and Trademark Office

has ruled to cancel the trademarks.

But it went up to an appeals court,

and the football team won because of what it can only be called a

technicality lack of standing on the part of the particular people who were suing

which they could have fixed if they'd seen the problem coming.

So they went back, got a group of people who unquestionably did have standing, and it has taken

until now for that proceeding to reach a decision, which is once again the Patent and Trademark Office has

...