{"id":510317,"date":"2026-01-07T22:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/510317\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T22:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:05:12","slug":"as-fan-group-beats-team-to-las-vegas-athletics-trademark-application","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/510317\/","title":{"rendered":"A’s fan group beats team to Las Vegas Athletics trademark application"},"content":{"rendered":"

The team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics<\/a> has encountered a significant speed bump ahead of its move to Las Vegas, Nevada. The team has been unable to secure multiple trademarks due to a fan group.<\/p>\n

News surfaced on Tuesday that the MLB team had filed trademark applications for “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics.” The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied the requests two separate times while creating some confusion among legal experts.<\/p>\n

Now, a reason for the denials has surfaced. Bay Area news station KRON 4 reported<\/a> that A’s fan group Last Dive Bar had filed a trademark application before the team.<\/p>\n

“We said, ‘Let’s file for it,'” Bryan Johansen of the Last Dive Bar told the news station. “So we filed a new (application), and it got accepted and now it’s in processing. So Last Dive Bar is, hopefully within five months, will be the owners of the Las Vegas Athletics.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn application for the Las Vegas Athletics trademark is filed but apparently it was not by the team.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lmfaoooooooooooooo \ud83d\ude02 pic.twitter.com\/XU6RfGyPup<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Last Dive Bar \ud83c\udfdf (@LastDiveBar) January 6, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

The A’s<\/a> are not immediately heading to Las Vegas after a contentious departure from the Bay Area. The John Fisher-owned team will spend the next three seasons competing in Sacramento.<\/p>\n

The plan is to move to Nevada in the spring of 2028, which will coincide with the opening of a 30,000-capacity stadium on the former site of the\u00a0Tropicana Hotel.<\/p>\n

Prior to the news of Last Dive Bar’s application, lawyer Josh Gerben wrote a blog post<\/a> analyzing the surprising application denials from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.<\/p>\n

He explained that the MLB team has not yet begun widespread commercial use of the “Las Vegas Athletics” name for the goods and services listed in the applications, so the A’s have limited evidence to show distinctiveness in the marketplace. They can not show money spent on marketing, media recognition, or other benchmarks that the USPTO would rely on while making a ruling.<\/p>\n

“That said, it is unusual, borderline odd, for an MLB franchise to run into this kind of roadblock,” Gerben wrote. “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’t think of generic sporting activities… they think of the baseball team currently playing in Sacramento and planning a move to Las Vegas.”<\/p>\n