LADAS ATTORNEYS SUPPORTED DIVERSITY IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION BY ATTENDING A LECTURE AND PERFORMANCE BY SIMON TAM AND THE SLANTS AT A NEW YORK INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW EDUCATION FOUNDATION EVENT

On October 25th, Ladas attorneys Matthew Asbell, Heather Brodsky and Jose Landivar attended the 1st Annual Diversity Scholarship Event for the New York Intellectual Property Law Education Foundation (NYIPLEF). This event was held to provide scholarship funds to diverse, outstanding law students.

The keynote speaker was Simon Tam, who is the leader of the band, The Slants, and he and his band also performed live at the event.  Mr. Tam is best known in intellectual property law circles for successfully overcoming the refusal to register his band name as a trademark by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on grounds that the term SLANTS was considered disparaging of a substantial composite of the U.S. population of Asian Americans.  With the help of volunteer lawyers and experts and some crowd-funding, Mr. Tam took his case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that the ban on registration of disparaging trademarks was an unconstitutional violation of the right to freedom of speech.

We are pleased to have supported diversity in the legal profession by our participation at the event and through a bid during a silent auction held at the event on an electric guitar autographed by the band! (We’ll let you know if we win!)

L to R: Heather Brodsky, Simon Tam and Matthew Asbell