{"id":470458,"date":"2026-05-28T01:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T01:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/470458\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T01:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T01:00:08","slug":"taylor-swift-battle-over-showgirl-trademark-leads-to-courtroom-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/470458\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift Battle Over ‘Showgirl’ Trademark Leads to Courtroom Clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTaylor Swift<\/a>\u2019s trademark war with real-life Las Vegas \u201cshowgirl\u201d Maren Wade kicked into high gear Wednesday, with the superstar\u2019s lawyer arguing in court that Wade\u2019s request for an immediate ban on album-related merch sales would trample Swift\u2019s right to free speech.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the hearing in downtown Los Angeles, Swift\u2019s lawyer said Wade\u2019s request for an immediate ban on sales of candles, tumblers, brushes, and other merchandise bearing the album title defied \u201ccommon sense.\u201d He said Swift\u2019s album, The Life of a Showgirl<\/a>, did not infringe on Wade\u2019s \u201cConfessions of a Showgirl\u201d trademark because it was \u201cabsolutely undisputed\u201d that the album is an expressive work entitled to legal protections.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is the rare and special circumstance of an album \u2014 a classic expressive work,\u201d the lawyer, J. Douglas Baldridge, argued. \u201cThat\u2019s why the First Amendment applies here. That\u2019s why you can\u2019t get a preliminary injunction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said that for Wade to prevail and obtain \u201cthe extraordinary remedy she seeks,\u201d she would have to show that consumers who see Wade\u2019s live shows, listen to her podcast, or read her book would have to think to themselves, \u201cOh, that\u2019s Ms. Swift,\u201d or \u201cthat\u2019s a Swift-sponsored activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t see how that could ever happen,\u201d he said. \u201cFor them to prevail, it\u2019s not realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWade sued Swift for trademark infringement<\/a> in March and asked for the emergency moratorium on merchandise sales while the case plays out. The judge overseeing the case heard the argument on the injunction request Wednesday but did not issue an immediate ruling.<\/p>\n

\n\tWade\u2019s lawyer, Jaymie Parkkinen, argued that his client owns a federally registered, incontestable trademark for \u201cConfessions of a Showgirl\u201d and that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office \u201crefused\u201d Swift\u2019s application to register her album title as a competing trademark because it was too similar and could cause market confusion.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSince 2014, that mark has identified one person. A search for it returned one person. Today, [Wade\u2019s] mark no longer points to [Wade.] \u00a0When a consumer types her exact registered mark into Google, autocomplete suggests [Swift],\u201d Parkkinen told the court. \u201cThat\u2019s reverse confusion,\u201d he continued. \u201c[Wade] owns the mark, and defendant\u2019s conduct is eroding it. Money cannot fix that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tAccording to Parkkinen, Wade and Swift are more closely aligned than Baldridge suggested. \u201cWe have solo female performers. Both perform live music onstage. Both produce recorded entertainment and operate in the same social media, streaming, television, and online [channels]. Both embody the showgirl story and aesthetic,\u201d he said. \u201cConsumers are getting them confused.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWade is a working performer who parlayed her 2014 \u201cConfessions of a Showgirl\u201d column in Las Vegas Weekly into a live show, a touring production, a book, a podcast \u2013 and her trademark. She says when Swift announced her album name, she was excited at first, but the album\u2019s overwhelming success<\/a> quickly overpowered and drowned her out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c\u2019Confessions of a Showgirl\u2019 is not one mark among many for plaintiff. It is the only one she has,\u201d her court filings, obtained by Rolling Stone, say. \u201c[Wade] has built her professional identity under it for more than a decade, and she has no portfolio of alternative brands, no corporate backing, and no global marketing operation to compete for consumer attention. Defendants have all of these. That asymmetry is directly relevant to the equities, and it tips in plaintiff\u2019s favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the Wednesday hearing, Swift\u2019s lawyer pointed out that Wade saw an opportunity when Swift named her album \u2014 and seized it. He said she used hashtags related to Swift to direct traffic to her commercial website and asked people to follow her in her \u201cShowgirl era.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThere is absolutely no doubt that this woman, because of exuberance or trying to realize commercial gain, was very much affiliating herself with Ms. Swift for eight months while millions was spent to get this album out there, and it can\u2019t be undone,\u201d Baldridge said. \u201cIt was eight months of not objecting to an expressive work while she glommed onto it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Wade\u2019s lawyer pushed back. He said his client spent 12 years building her own brand, writing a column, staging her own show, touring, publishing a book, and winning an \u201cincontestable federal registration,\u201d only to see her trademark \u201cabsorbed in real time into a multi-billion dollar commercial machine.\u201d He said Swift, on the other hand, was a \u201csophisticated repeat trademark holder\u201d who knew her attempt to get a trademark for her album didn\u2019t succeed and who suspended her application rather than try to cure it.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThe hardship is not even close,\u201d Parkkinen said. \u201cThey knew what they were doing and they proceeded anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge said she planned to \u201cissue a written ruling shortly\u201d on Wade\u2019s request for the injunction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift\u2019s trademark war with real-life Las Vegas \u201cshowgirl\u201d Maren Wade kicked into high gear Wednesday, with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2126,47452,93,61,60,278,6543,34385],"class_list":["post-470458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-controversy","tag-courts-and-crime","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-taylor-swift","tag-the-life-of-a-showgirl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}