Spencer Pratt’s LA hats are likely ‘straight-up’ trademark infringement

Spencer Pratt, a reality TV alum best known for his villainous turn on “The Hills,” has run a blustery campaign for Los Angeles mayor. Much like President Donald Trump, who approvingly deemed Pratt a “big MAGA person” Wednesday, the Republican mayoral hopeful has adopted a stance promising to restore the city “back” to a “golden age,” as he’s said in a viral ad. Pratt also shares Trump’s proclivity for visibly going after his political enemies. A sticker features what appears to be an AI-generated image of Mayor Karen Bass sitting in a garbage can, reading, “Throw out Karen Basura,” invoking the Spanish word for trash while needling his biggest current rival. Pratt’s online store offers hats that read “Let it burn” in the fire font made famous by the skate magazine Thrasher, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s name underneath the flames — a nod to Pratt’s near-constant assertion that city and state officials, through incompetence or worse, allowed his Pacific Palisades home and neighborhood to burn in 2025’s deadly Los Angeles wildfires. 

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Besides finger-pointing, cultivating a sense of nostalgia seems central to Pratt trying to get voters on board with his ideology, evidenced by how much of his visual strategy riffs on LA pop culture and athletic institutions. On Pratt’s various online stores, T-shirts and baseball hats are emblazoned with the Los Angeles Dodgers logo, with his last name surrounding the recognizable central “A” entwined with the ‘L.” Another design sees Pratt’s name done up in the oblique font that the Los Angeles Lakers use in their branding. When TMZ reported last week that Pratt is currently residing in the $1,500-per-night Hotel Bel-Air, instead of the Airstream trailer on his burned Palisades property that he previously claimed as his home, Pratt responded with a video. It stars him, spoofing the 1990s hit “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme song as a way to explain himself. The video, which showed an Airstream trailer being towed onto the hotel’s property, came quickly on the heels of criticism about where Pratt has actually been living. Pratt has since tried to walk back his statement about living on his Palisades property, arguing that he never claimed to reside in the trailer.

But Pratt might have other issues on the horizon related to where he’s sourcing inspiration for his campaign materials. Some of his campaign merchandise, particularly the nearly $50 hats cribbing liberally from the Dodgers and Lakers logos, is “probably just straight-up infringements” of trademark law, says Mark McKenna, a professor at the UCLA School of Law. “When [Pratt] is selling stuff with it on there, I would think those are reasonably strong claims by the Dodgers or others who own the trademark.”

McKenna explains that in order for something to infringe on a trademark, it has to be used in commerce; Pratt selling merchandise with very similar logos to those of the Dodgers and Lakers would likely meet that mark. Crucially, “There’d have to be likelihood of confusion” from consumers who aren’t sure if the product came from Pratt himself or, say, the Lakers’ own merch store, McKenna adds. The Lakers and the Dodgers did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment.

A related case played out in 2025 when, while running for mayor of New York City, then-candidate Zohran Mamdani released a campaign image that stylized his name in the distinctive orange-and-blue font used by the New York Knicks. The team filed a cease-and-desist letter with Mamdani’s campaign, and the campaign told Bloomberg the ad would be adjusted.

In other cases, trademark holders have opted to keep quiet even if they have a strong case for infringement. “They both run the risk that people will think that this is some kind of endorsement of the candidate, but also they run the risk if they were aggressive, and saying, ‘You can’t do this,’ of looking like they’re trying to shut down political speech,” McKenna says. “That’s a PR problem, it’s not a trademark problem.” Yet with respect to Pratt selling Lakers- and Dodgers-esque merchandise, “I would think that if they wanted to enforce, they would have pretty strong grounds to do that,” McKenna adds.

Although Pratt’s “Fresh Prince” video riff contains some lyrics identical to the original theme song, it likely does not run afoul of the show’s copyright holders, NBC Universal. While mere reproduction can be a copyright infringement, things get thorny when considering “fair use” — and political parties “have a very heavy thumb on the scale for being fair use,” says McKenna. Pratt’s satirical video “is done in the context of political speech, and that would very likely make it fair use.” (NBC Universal did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment.)

Pratt’s fans have responded to his campaign with similarly flashy votes of confidence. A few weeks ago, a Pratt supporter created a series of AI-generated videos boosting Pratt — including one where the mayoral candidate is dressed as Batman, throwing tomatoes at current LA mayor Karen Bass, with Joker makeup, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio DJs in the background. Pratt swiftly reposted the AI videos, which use prominent Disney and Warner Bros. characters, on X. Representatives for Pratt did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment.

When he’s not residing at the Hotel Bel-Air, Pratt lives in the Santa Barbara area on the Central Coast. His campaign headquarters, meanwhile, is deep in south San Diego County in the city of Imperial Beach, just north of the Mexico border.