{"id":509023,"date":"2026-01-07T03:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/509023\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T03:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:06:10","slug":"las-vegas-athletics-hit-trademark-roadblock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/509023\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Vegas Athletics hit trademark roadblock"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Las Vegas Athletics<\/a> hit a roadblock before their move to Southern Nevada. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied the baseball team’s bid to register “Las Vegas Athletics” as a new trademark.<\/p>\n

The USPTO stated that the term \u201cathletics\u201d is simply \u201cthe purpose and feature of applicant\u2019s goods and services,\u201d and therefore the application for \u201cLas Vegas Athletics\u201d is \u201cprimarily geographically descriptive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team plans to move to Las Vegas in 2028 as construction is underway on a stadium there. The team is playing in Sacramento until then, after leaving Oakland in 2024.<\/p>\n

Front Office Sports reported<\/a> that representatives for MLB and the A\u2019s declined to comment, but two sources familiar with the matter told the website that MLB handles trademark applications for all 30 teams.<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports reported<\/a> that the decision could have major implications for the franchise\u2019s ability to fight knock-off merchandise and other third-party uses. The Athletics can still respond to the non-final action, or file a legal appeal.<\/p>\n

After being established in 1901 in Philadelphia, the Athletics baseball team has already moved twice, to Kansas City in 1955 and then to Oakland in 1968.<\/p>\n

In a blog post<\/a>, trademark attorney Josh Gerben said it was \u201cunusual, borderline odd, for an MLB franchise to run into this kind of roadblock.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wrote that because the team has not yet started playing under its new name or in its new location, it cannot produce \u201cmarketplace evidence, such as sales figures, advertising spend, media recognition, and consumer perception, that would normally overcome a descriptiveness refusal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat puts the organization in a classic rock-and-a-hard-place scenario,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The Athletics\u2019 ownership decided to move the team to Las Vegas after failing to reach a new deal to build a new stadium to remain in Oakland, and received MLB approval in 2023.<\/p>\n

Las Vegas\u2019s historic Tropicana casino-hotel has been demolished to clear space for the new $2 billion, 33,000-capacity baseball stadium.<\/p>\n

Nevada and Clark County approved up to $380 million in public funds for the ballpark, and the A\u2019s have said they will cover the remaining expenses. Team owner John Fisher has been seeking investors to assist in the funding.<\/p>\n

Yahoo reported that, despite having successfully trademarked the Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Athletics names previously, the USPTO found that \u201cclaim of ownership of an active prior registration\u201d was not sufficient and that each application is assessed on its own merits.<\/p>\n

The \u201cburden of establishing acquired distinctiveness … is commensurately high and requires more evidence,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Gerben wrote that the USPTO refusal, issued on Dec. 29, reaffirms an earlier decision finding that the marks are primarily geographically descriptive and therefore not eligible for registration on the Principal Register.<\/p>\n

According to the USPTO, the dominant portion of each mark refers to a well-known geographic location (Las Vegas) while the remaining wording, “Athletics,” lacks distinctiveness as applied to the goods and services identified in the applications.<\/p>\n

He added that professional sports teams typically have no trouble demonstrating that the public associates a team name with a single source.<\/p>\n

“When people hear ‘Athletics,’ they don\u2019t think of generic sporting activities,” Gerben wrote. “They think of the baseball team currently playing in Sacramento and planning a move to Las Vegas.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Las Vegas Athletics hit a roadblock before their move to Southern Nevada. The U.S. Patent and Trademark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,8922,6018,67302,67303,67305,2119,2140,5542,2137,4,3226,306,319,494,169,12420,1045,300,503,2199,185,317,67301,67304,12632],"class_list":{"0":"post-509023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-fisher","12":"tag-infringement","13":"tag-intellectual","14":"tag-intellectual-property","15":"tag-john","16":"tag-john-fisher","17":"tag-las","18":"tag-las-vegas","19":"tag-mlb","20":"tag-mlb-athletics","21":"tag-national","22":"tag-national-sports","23":"tag-negative","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-nv","26":"tag-oakland","27":"tag-overall","28":"tag-overall-negative","29":"tag-property","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-sports-news","32":"tag-trademark","33":"tag-trademark-infringement","34":"tag-vegas"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115851611044221418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}