U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly threw out the 1999 decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office board to cancel six of the team's trademarks, citing not her opinion on the racist nature of the marks (to many Native Americans, the epithet "redskin" is as offensive as the "N word" is to African Americans), but rather that the board had ralied on "partial, dated and irrelevant evidence submitted by the activists.