The Washington Commanders are selling gear with the old Redskins name and logo at the team store, a move the franchise says is necessary to preserve trademark rights but that raises questions about the team’s commitment to moving away from its controversial past.
According to a report from WUSA’s Eric Flack, the team is offering items such as Art Monk T-shirts featuring the Redskins name and logo. The team insists the sale is not a precursor to bringing back the name, which was retired in 2020 amid pressure from sponsors and activists who deemed it offensive to Native Americans.
“We are required to maintain the marks in commercial usage so that marks remain under franchise control,” a club spokesman told WUSA.
The explanation stems from U.S. trademark law, specifically the Lanham Act, which states that a trademark is considered abandoned if it is not used for three consecutive years. To keep the rights, the team must show “bona fide use … in the ordinary course of trade,” according to OutKick’s Armando Salguero, who also noted that token sales made solely to reserve rights do not meet the statutory standard.
That raises the question: Does a limited-time sale of Redskins merchandise constitute more than a “token” use? Critics argue that a short, promotional sale appears to be exactly the kind of token use the law dismisses.
But the larger issue, as some observers note, is why the team would fight to hold onto a trademark it has no intention of using again. Every NFL team seeks to protect its intellectual property, but the Commanders’ rationale seems at odds with its stated reason for dropping the name in the first place — that it was offensive.
If the team must use the mark in a meaningful, non-token way to keep it, that would require prominent display and sale of the Redskins logo, putting the team in an awkward position of profiting off a name it publicly disavowed.
A Legal Gray Area
The Lanham Act’s requirement for “bona fide use” means the team’s limited sale might not actually satisfy the legal threshold. As Salguero pointed out, merely selling a few items for a short period may not be enough to prevent abandonment. This could mean the team’s effort is either legally insufficient or, if it does work, forces them to make the use more substantial — a path that leads back to the very name they dropped.
In either case, the team faces a contradiction. If they need to keep using the mark to protect it, why not just bring the name back? If they truly want to distance themselves from it, they could release the trademark entirely.
Call to Return Trademark to Blackfeet Family
Some, including the family of Chief Two Guns White Calf — the Blackfeet leader whose image was used in the original Redskins logo — have called for the team to hand over the trademark rights. The family has long argued that they should control the image and have expressed willingness to allow the team to use it if the name is restored.
The debate is far from settled. The Commanders’ sale of Redskins gear may be a legal maneuver, but it also shows that the name and logo still hold commercial value. Whether the team will continue to use them in a way that satisfies trademark law — or eventually give up the fight — remains to be seen.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2026/08/26/commanders-sell-gear-with-redskins-name-logo-at-team-store/