{"id":151598,"date":"2025-09-21T17:51:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T17:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/151598\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T17:51:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T17:51:13","slug":"prince-estate-claim-they-never-threatened-apollonia-and-lawsuit-trademark-must-be-dropped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/151598\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince estate claim they never threatened Apollonia and lawsuit trademark must be dropped"},"content":{"rendered":"

The estate of Prince<\/a> has asked a federal judge to drop a trademark lawsuit filed by the late singer\u2019s Purple Rain co-star Apollonia, who says the estate is \u201cstealing\u201d her name.<\/p>\n

Patricia Apollonia Kotero starred in the late pop icon\u2019s 1984 film Purple Rain as his love interest, who goes by the name Apollonia. As well as releasing a solo album, she featured on the single \u2018Take Me With U\u2019 from the album \u2018Purple Rain\u2019 and was also lead singer of the girl group Apollonia 6, who were founded by Prince.<\/p>\n

Last month, she filed a 14-page complaint against the Prince\u2019s estate, Paisley Park Enterprises, accusing them of \u201cattempting to steal\u201d her name<\/a>. Kotero\u00a0alleged that \u201cPrince himself consented to and encouraged Apollonia in her professional endeavours\u201d using that name. Kotero has now used the name for over four decades and released numerous projects under the alias.<\/p>\n

Due to this, her legal team alleges in the lawsuit, the estate was out of line when it tried to claim ownership of the Apollonia trademark in June by filing an \u201cintent-to-use\u201d application that would allow it to use the name in connection with clothing and entertainment services.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the goodwill associated with the name and trademark \u2018Apollonia\u2019 for the past four decades is attributable to plaintiff,\u201d the artist\u2019s lawsuit states. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, Prince\u2019s estate dismissed it as \u201cfrivolous\u201d and \u201cunwarranted\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In court filings from Wednesday (September 17), Paisley Park Enterprises (PPE) has said that Kotero\u2019s lawsuit was \u201cimproperly filed\u201d over \u201chypothetical threats\u201d, and that it has no intention to stop the artist from continuing to use her stage name, per Billboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPPE has absolutely never insisted that plaintiff cease using Apollonia as her stage name, nor has PPE demanded that plaintiff cease any of her business activities,\u201d wrote L. Londell McMillan, one of the managers of the estate and a legal advisor to Prince.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have personally told this to plaintiff several times.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The filings continued to say that PPE wanted to co-exist with Kotero, and clarified that it only took action at the USPTO because her existing trademark registration on \u201cApollonia\u201d blocked the estate\u2019s own attempt to secure the rights for \u201cApollonia 6,\u201d the name of the Prince-founded girl group that Kotero led.<\/p>\n

The estate then claimed that Kotero obtained the trademark \u201cduring [the] chaotic period following Prince\u2019s death\u201d, and therefore it has grounds to cancel it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing his death, certain people with no ownership interest in Prince\u2019s trademarks registered or applied to register marks that rightfully belonged to Prince,\u201d McMillan writes in the court documents. \u201cThese same individuals never attempted such improper actions during Prince\u2019s lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement to Billboard, Kotero\u2019s lawyer Daniel M. Cislo said: \u201cUnfortunately, this is another attack on Apollonia\u2019s name which will be dealt with in Apollonia\u2019s favor.\u201d Her attorneys will have chance to respond to the estate\u2019s motion to dismiss in the weeks and months ahead.<\/p>\n

Prince\u00a0died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016<\/a>. He was 57-years-old.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Netflix announced that a long-awaited nine-part series exploring the life and career of the music icon had been abandoned<\/a>, in favour of a new \u201cmutual agreement\u201d with the Prince estate. Instead, the new deal would allow Netflix to \u201cdevelop and produce a new documentary featuring exclusive content from Prince\u2019s archive\u201d.<\/p>\n

Back in March, the director of the axed doc then said it is a \u201cjoke<\/a>\u201d that the streaming giant chose to cancel the project<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The estate of Prince has asked a federal judge to drop a trademark lawsuit filed by the late…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,1581,3584,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-151598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-pop","tag-rock","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}