The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Matel v. Tam paves the way for trademarking racial slurs.

Simon Shaio Tam, an Asian-American who sought to trademark a racially derisive term for Asians, is happy about the court's ruling. He's happy because the court ruled in his favor, invalidating on First Amendment grounds a 71-year old statutory provision of the Lanham Act called the disparagement clause, or as Justice Samuel Alito called it the “happy-talk clause.”

Relying on the disparagement clause, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, had denied Tam's application to register the name of his band, “The Slants,” because the name would offend Asians. Agreeing that it would, Tam believed he could combat its denigrating force by owning it, both legally, vis-a-vis a trademark, and symbolically, as a defiant proclamation that he could not be offended by a term that he chose to reclaim and transform. Paradoxically, the court's ruling was a blow to a group of Native Americans fighting the same battle with a different strategy.