Unforgiven was first held as the pay-per-view (PPV) in April 1998; In Your House was a series of monthly PPV shows first produced by the then-World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in May 1995. The In Your House branding was retired following February 1999's event, as the company moved to install permanent names for each of its monthly PPVs. Unforgiven then returned in September 1999 as its own PPV event, thus establishing Unforgiven as the annual September PPV for the promotion, which was renamed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in May 2002. The 2004 event was the seventh event in the Unforgiven chronology and took place on September 12 at the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon. Like the previous year's event, it featured wrestlers exclusively from the Raw brand.