{"id":339,"date":"2026-05-27T05:02:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T05:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sanfranciscomovingguide.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2026-05-27T05:02:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T05:02:40","slug":"spencer-pratts-la-hats-are-likely-straight-up-trademark-infringement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanfranciscomovingguide.com\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Pratt’s LA hats are likely ‘straight-up’ trademark infringement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Spencer Pratt, a\u00a0reality TV alum best known for his villainous turn on \u201cThe Hills,\u201d has run a blustery campaign for Los Angeles mayor. Much like President Donald Trump, who approvingly deemed Pratt a \u201cbig MAGA person\u201d Wednesday, the Republican mayoral hopeful has adopted a stance promising to restore the city \u201cback\u201d to a \u201cgolden age,\u201d as he\u2019s said in a viral ad. Pratt also shares Trump\u2019s 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, \u201cThrow out Karen Basura,\u201d invoking the Spanish word for trash while needling his biggest current rival. Pratt\u2019s online store offers hats that read \u201cLet it burn\u201d in the fire font made famous by the skate magazine Thrasher, with Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s name underneath the flames \u2014 a nod to Pratt\u2019s near-constant assertion that city and state officials, through incompetence or worse, allowed his Pacific Palisades home and neighborhood to burn in 2025\u2019s deadly Los Angeles wildfires.\u00a0<\/p>

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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\u2019s various online stores, T-shirts and baseball hats are emblazoned with the Los Angeles Dodgers logo, with his last name surrounding the recognizable central \u201cA\u201d entwined with the \u2018L.\u201d Another design sees Pratt\u2019s 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\u00a0Bel-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 \u201cThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air\u201d theme song as a way to explain himself. The video, which showed an Airstream trailer being towed onto the hotel\u2019s 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.<\/p><\/div>

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But Pratt might have other issues on the horizon related to where he\u2019s\u00a0sourcing inspiration for his campaign materials. Some of his campaign merchandise, particularly the nearly $50 hats cribbing liberally from the Dodgers and Lakers logos, is \u201cprobably just straight-up infringements\u201d of trademark law, says Mark McKenna, a professor at the UCLA School of Law. \u201cWhen [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.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

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, \u201cThere\u2019d have to be likelihood of confusion\u201d from consumers who aren\u2019t sure if the product came from Pratt himself or, say, the Lakers\u2019 own\u00a0merch store, McKenna adds. The Lakers and the Dodgers did not respond to SFGATE\u2019s request for comment.<\/p><\/div>

A related case played out in 2025 when, while running for mayor of New York City, then-candidate\u00a0Zohran 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\u2019s campaign, and the campaign told\u00a0Bloomberg the ad would be adjusted.<\/p><\/div>

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In other cases, trademark holders have opted to keep quiet even if they have a strong case for infringement. \u201cThey 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, \u2018You can\u2019t do this,\u2019 of looking like they\u2019re trying to shut down political speech,\u201d McKenna says. \u201cThat\u2019s a PR problem, it\u2019s not a trademark problem.\u201d Yet with respect to Pratt selling Lakers- and Dodgers-esque merchandise, \u201cI would think that if they wanted to enforce, they would have pretty strong grounds to do that,\u201d McKenna adds.<\/p><\/div>

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