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Nasir and Matt kick things off by discussing the U.S.Patent and Trademark Office canceling the Washington Redskins' trademark registration. They then answer the following for a dentist from Napa, California, "We have a handfull of clients who owe us money. Some are a couple days late and some are months outstanding. At what point should we sue, or at least threaten suit?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business news and put in our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. No other comment. MATT: It sounds like you recorded this at a different time and we just throw this in every time because it always sounds the same. I need some variation for future episodes. NASIR: Yeah, I know. I like to comment on the intro as well but I was trying not to this time but you brought it up. MATT: Fair enough. We’re going to get into a topic that I know you love and that’s sports. I guess it deals with sports. So, this will be coming out on Monday. I’m sure people have heard this story by now. It’s not like it’s a new story because it’s been going on for years and years. but the Washington Redskins – professional football team, for your purposes, just to let you know – obviously, it’s the Redskins and that’s a term that a lot of people find offensive, especially nowadays, maybe not back in the 1930’s when they started, but they’ve taken a lot of heat over the last couple of decades and, you know, as of this past week, the US Patent Office cancelled all the Redskins trademark registrations saying the name is disparaging. Basically, what this means is anyone’s free to use “Redskins” in terms of memorabilia, what-have-you. But I think there’s greater ramifications than just that. NASIR: Yeah, and this doesn’t apply to the logo itself – just the name. So, you could name your football team Redskins now. But they may appeal it, too. So, we’ll see. What’s interesting about this, and this is more on the legal side of things to make it fun for us lawyers to look at, this was challenged back in 1999 or 1992 or something like that, and that was appealed. So, the USPTO, they rejected the trademark but it was appealed by the Redskins. The reason the Redskins won at that time was there was this legal theory called latches which basically just means you delayed your appeal. They’ve been using this for years. Therefore, you can no longer try to move to reject this trademark because it’s disparaging. But then, what happened is the latest iteration of this legal action involves an 18-year-old petitioner who wasn’t of age at the time so could not have brought an action in the first place. So, this whole latches theory no longer stands. It’s a very clever legal trick to get this going but, obviously, it worked so far. Even though the title of all these news agencies say the USPTO cancelled Redskins’ trademark, that’s true, but it was not on their own accord. It was something that was moved by a third party. MATT: Yeah. So, pretty crazy loophole. It’s kind of surprising nothing too series has happened between now and then. If you pay attention to sports at all, you should have seen, this has been going on for years. They just take heat constantly from people, especially the Native American community, that are just criticizing the use of Redskins because they find it offensive and there’s been other sports teams – maybe more collegiate and NCAA teams – that have ended up changing their names because it was offensive to certain people. NASIR: I think people might be surprised to know that basically any trademark can be challenged because it’s disparaging. That definition of disparaging obviously can change over time as it has now – maybe, as you mentioned, before it may not have been an issue but, obviously, now,