The Slants' battle to protect their band name is almost over.

The Portland group stood before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the culmination of a trademark fight that has taken years, thousands of dollars, and caught the attention of an NFL team and nationwide news.

After two trademark applications were denied under the 1946 Trademark Act, also known as the Lanham Act, founder and bassist Simon Tam fought the decision: he has argued his group, an Asian-American band, is reclaiming the name as social commentary. But the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected his applications on the grounds that "Slants" is a disparaging term under the Trademark Act's 2(a) section.

"It didn't occur to us at the time that there would be an issue with the name," Tam told the Oregonian in 2011. The case has been in court ever since, until the breakthrough of a Dec. 2015 victory that paved the way for the case to move upward.

On Wednesday morning, the case, Lee v. Tam, arrived at the Supreme Court, which heard arguments for almost an hour.

"Suppose the application here had been for Slants Are Superior. So that's a complimentary term. Would that then be--take it outside the disparagement bar?" Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked, according to the Supreme Court's transcript, as the conversation wandered through various hypotheticals.

"Why isn't that disparaging of everyone else?," Chief Justice John Roberts responded. "Slants Are Superior, well, superior to whom?"

Later, Ginsburg wondered what Tam might be, too:

"Does it not count at all that everyone knows that The Slants is using this term not at all to disparage, but simply to describe?" she said. "It takes the sting out of the word."

"The trademark examiner acknowledged that Mr. Tam's sincere intent appeared to be to reclaim the word, to use it as a symbol of Asian-American pride rather than to use it as a slur," Malcolm L. Stewart, the Trademark Office's representative, responded. "He -- he also found a lot of evidence in form of Internet commentary to the effect that many Asian-Americans, even those who recognized that this was Mr. Tam's intent, still found the use of the word as a band name offensive."

The Slants' lawyer John C. Connell opened his remarks with a different comparison.

"If our client, Mr. Simon Tam, had sought to register the mark of his band as The Proud Asians, we would not be here today," he said. "But he did not do that. Instead he sought to register The Slants."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned why existing legal protections and free speech rights, without a registered trademark, weren't enough.

"it is a burden because our client is denied the benefits of legal protections that are necessary for him to compete in the marketplace with another band," Connell said.

"He can still sue," Sotomayor said. "He can still compete... he's just not getting as much as he would like, but he's not stopped from doing anything he's doing."

Just after 11 a.m., the hearing finished, and now the Slants will wait for a final answer.

Simon Tam of The Slants after #Scotus argument pic.twitter.com/9WyV3ueGLw — Michael Doyle (@MichaelDoyle10) January 18, 2017

Also waiting: the NFL's Washington Redskins, who lost their trademark registration in 2014 after over two decades of legal squabbling. The team at one point attempted to attach its case to the Slants, hoping to skip past its current proceedings in Virginia federal appeals court. But to Tam's relief, the cases remained separate.

The football team has been under fire from Native American groups, while Tam and his band have claimed the support of Asian-American organizations and community leaders such as Melissa Hung, the founder of an Asian-American film festival dubbed the Slant Festival.

Before Wednesday's hearing, the court case drew attention from the Associated Press to the Washington Post to NPR. A Wall Street Journal editorial argued in the band's favor. Virginia's Thomas Jefferson Center called it "probably the biggest First Amendment case of the year."

"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will stand by the Court of Appeals

for the Federal Circuit's decision in finding viewpoint discrimination

through trademark registration unconstitutional," Tam said in a statement after the hearing.

"I've spent almost 8 years in court - almost a quarter of my life - so that I could fight for marginalized communities to have their voices protected. Voices that are often silenced in fear of a football team regaining their trademark registrations. Our obsession to punish villainous characters should not justify the collateral damage that the undeserved experience," he continued. "Part of taking up the cost was possibly being forever associated with a team who I find disagreeable, but it was for the greater good of justice... I hope that our case encourages others towards having robust conversations of racial justice in order to create better law."

Whatever the decision, the Slants' music will play on. The band prepared for its day in court with a new EP, "The Band Who Must Not Be Named."

"We were writing and recording as we were taking the final steps to go the Supreme Court," Tam said in a previous statement. "The songs are extremely timely and appropriate for our trademark case being argued."

"I'm hoping the EP reminds people that we are more than just that band that's going to court," guitarist Joe X. Jiang added. "Speaking for myself, I feel much more connected to being a musician than an activist. At the end of the day, after the Supreme Court hearing, I'm going to come home and continue writing songs."

The band will perform in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday night, with an international tour to follow. They'll have a handful of Portland shows ahead, including a headlining performance at the Analog Cafe on March 31.

-- David Greenwald

dgreenwald@oregonian.com

503-294-7625; @davidegreenwald

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