Well, it appears that as of a week ago today the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit doesn’t buy claims made by Pamela Geller & Robert Spencer to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board that “the essays posted on their website do not advocate suppression of the Islamic faith, but only oppose political Islamisation.” Ditto for their claims that “the Board erred in relying on ‘cherry-picked anonymous comments’ posted on their website.” An essay about their lawsuit against Detroit Transit also seems to have hurt them—I can only imagine what sort of poisonous spewing it involved. Geller must be livid.

Is it possible that Geller & Spencer truly don’t understand how utterly hateful and unhinged they and the commenters at their websites sound to people who aren’t consumed with suspicion & fear? I doubt it—I think they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re being paid well to do it. Spending a few minutes reading their posts and the disgusting, bigoted comments their visitors leave will quickly give the lie to their claims of merely being against violent extremists. If you read the court’s decision (PDF) you’ll see that’s exactly what happened in this case.

By the way, Geller & Spencer were represented in this case by attorney David Yerushalmi, the man behind the anti-Sharia movement. Not only has Yerushalmi been identified as a white supremacist, but even the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has documented his bigotry: David Yerushalmi: A Driving Force Behind Anti-Sharia Efforts in the U.S. (PDF). They’ve also documented Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), including its numerous unsavory allies.

If my understanding of the hierarchy of the federal court system is correct, then their only hope now is to be heard by the Supreme Court.

Once again freedom prevails, bigotry fails. As the article below points out, it’ll be interesting to see if this decision proves to be a weather vane for the much more widely covered Washington Redskins controversy, a name/trademark has been in use for some 80 years.

The USPTO rejected the application, concluding that the trademark was disparaging to American Muslims. A subsequent appeal to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) affirmed the USPTO decision […]World Trademark Review recently reported on The American Freedom Defense Initiative’s (AFDI) trademark application for its anti-sharia law campaign known as ‘Stop Islamisation of America’ (SIOA). The USPTO rejected the application, concluding that the trademark was disparaging to American Muslims. A subsequent appeal to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) affirmed the USPTO decision, finding that the mark conveyed “that the conversion or conformance to Islam must be stopped in order to prevent the intimidating threats and violence associated with terrorism”. The AFDI, led by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, then asked the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn the denial of its application. Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the board’s decision to refuse registration of the mark. […]

More: The ‘Stop Islamisation of America’ Trademark Receives Its Own Red Light