An interim decision of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal paves the way for a challenge to the legitimacy of the use of an offensive sports team name and logo during Major League Baseball (MLB) games at Rogers Centre in Toronto. The decision is of particular interest in that it dismisses arguments that the grant of a registered trademark in Canada confers a positive right to use that mark that cannot be interfered with by provincial legislation such as the Ontario Human Rights Code.
The challenge to offensive sports team names and logos is long overdue in Canada. In the United States, after having its own trademark invalidated for disparagement, Washington D.C.’s football team is awaiting the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the constitutionality of the provision of the Lanham Act used to bar the registration of an allegedly offensive trademark in another case. Although Washington’s trademarks are also registered in Canada, their legitimacy has yet to be challenged here. In 2015 Justice Murray Sinclair (now Senator Sinclair), head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, called for an end to the appropriation of indigenous names for sports teams and for a cessation of the use of racist names and logos. On the eve of the American League Baseball Championship Series in 2016, architect and activist Douglas Cardinal sought an injunction to prevent the broadcasting of the offensive name and logo of Cleveland’s major league baseball team. He argued that doing so would violate the Canadian Human Rights Act. He was unsuccessful in obtaining the injunction, but his related complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission – regarding discrimination in the provision of broadcasting services is ongoing. At the same time, Cardinal launched his complaint before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, arguing that when Cleveland’s team plays at Rogers Centre in Toronto, the provision of sports entertainment services (in the form of the games) is carried out in a discriminatory fashion. This is because Cardinal, a baseball fan, is confronted with racism in the form of the team name (the Indians) and logo (a grotesque caricature), particularly on the uniforms of the Cleveland team’s players.
The Cleveland team’s trademarks are registered in Canada. This means that they somehow avoided the prohibition on the registration of trademarks that are “scandalous, obscene or immoral” in section 9(1)(j) of the Trade-marks Act when they were registered in 1988 and 2012 respectively. (For a discussion of scandalous, obscene or immoral marks see my post here). Unsurprisingly, the respondents in this case (Rogers Communications, MLB, and the Cleveland Indians Baseball Company Ltd.) argued that the Ontario Human Rights Code could have no bearing on the use of registered trademarks in Canada. In other words, they maintained that once a trademark has been registered, the owner has a right to use that mark in Canada, and that such use cannot be interfered with by provincial legislation.
Vice-Chair Jo-Anne Pickel made relatively short work of this argument. She found that the Trade-marks Act does not confer a positive right to use a trademark; rather it grants the right to exclusive use of the mark. The distinction is important. The right to exclusive use of a mark protects the trademark owner against the use of an identical or confusing mark by others. But it does not mean that the owner is entitled to use the mark without limitation or restriction. In fact, Pickel noted that restrictions on trademark use are not uncommon; she cited laws restricting the use of tobacco trademarks in advertising as examples of the kind of limitation that can be imposed on the use of trademarks under either federal or provincial legislation. Similarly, a right to use a trademark can be subject to a provincial law of general application such as the Human Rights Code. She brushed aside an argument by MLB that the continued existence of the ‘Edmonton Eskimos’ trademark demonstrated that not all trademark owners are treated the same way under the Human Rights Code. She noted that “The key is that a similar claim could be brought and that it would be treated in the same way as this Application against the Cleveland Team.” Vice-Chair Pickel also noted that an order that would enjoin the use of the team’s name and logo when it played at Rogers’ Centre in Toronto was not the same as an order prohibiting the use of the trademark entirely; the jurisdiction of the tribunal was limited to the scope of application of the Human Rights Code.
Pickel also rejected arguments that the application of the Code in this context would intrude on federal jurisdiction over trademarks. She noted that courts have described the core of the federal power over trademarks as being “to establish a national system for the adoption, use, transfer, and enforcement of rights in respect of registered and un-registered trademarks.” (at para 52). In her view, “the application of the Code to the use of particular trade-marks in the context of baseball games at the Rogers Centre would fall outside this core.” (at para 52). She found that the application of the Code would not frustrate the purposes of the Trade-marks Act, and concluded that nothing in the Constitution deprived the human rights tribunal of jurisdiction over the issue of the legitimacy of the use of the team name and logo during baseball games at Rogers Centre.
The result of this decision is to remove roadblocks to the case moving forward. The adjudicator noted that it would still remain to be determined at the hearing whether baseball games being held at Rogers Centre constitute a service under the Code. Further, it remained to be determined just how each of the three respondents was linked to the delivery of these services for the purposes of the application of the Code.
Because Cardinal is also proceeding with a complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) relating to the broadcasting of the games (since broadcasting is under federal jurisdiction, it is the CHRA that would apply to those particular services), Pickel expressed concerns about both matters proceeding simultaneously. Because of the considerable overlap in factual and legal issues to be determined, there is a risk that the two tribunals might reach conflicting decisions on key issues of law or fact. She asked the parties to provide her with additional information about the status of the complaint under the CHRA in order to determine whether it would be best to postpone the hearing on the Human Rights Code application until the decision under the CHRA is rendered.
While it is almost certain that nothing will happen quickly as these matters proceed through the notoriously slow human rights tribunal processes, what is important is that something is finally starting to happen around the issue of offensive trademarks for sports teams in Canada. The legal tide is turning against the viability of such marks, creating new pressure for organizations to reconsider the value of clinging to offensive monikers in the name of ‘tradition’.