Temporality in a Time of Tam, or Towards a Racial Chronopolitics of Intellectual Property Law

Authors

Anjali Vats, University of Pittsburgh School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Abstract

This Article examines the intersections of race, intellectual property, and temporality from the vantage point of Critical Race Intellectual Property ("CRTIP"). More specifically, it offers one example of how trademark law operates to normalize white supremacy by and through judicial frameworks that default to Euro-American understandings of time. I advance its central argument-that achieving racial justice in the context of intellectual property law requires decolonizing Euro-American conceptions of time by considering how the equitable defense of laches and the judicial power to raise issues sua sponte operate in trademark law. I make this argument through a close reading of the racial chronopolitics of three cases: Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc. (2005), Matal v. Tam (2018), and Pro-Football, Inc. v. Blackhorse (2015). Through this critical examination, I aim to illuminate where and how time works to hinder racial justice in trademark law and encourage lawyers and judges invested in progressive intellectual property to intentionally decolonize their Euro-American temporal defaults.

This Article examines the intersections of race, intellectual property, and temporality from the vantage point of Critical Race Intellectual Property (“CRTIP”). More specifically, it offers one example of how trademark law operates to normalize white supremacy by and through judicial frameworks that default to Euro-American understandings of time. I advance its central argument—that achieving racial justice in the context of intellectual property law requires decolonizing Euro-American conceptions of time— by considering how the equitable defense of laches and the judicial power to raise issues sua sponte operate in trademark law. I make this argument through a close reading of the racial chronopolitics of three cases: Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc. (2005), Matal v. Tam (2018), and Pro- Football, Inc. v. Blackhorse (2015). Through this critical examination, I aim to illuminate where and how time works to hinder racial justice in trademark law and encourage lawyers and judges invested in progressive intellectual property to intentionally decolonize their Euro-American temporal defaults.

Recommended Citation

Anjali Vats, Temporality in a Time of Tam, or Towards a Racial Chronopolitics of Intellectual Property Law, 61 IDEA: The IP Law Review 673 (2021).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/556