{"id":1157,"date":"2025-07-11T09:28:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T09:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/1157\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T09:28:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T09:28:03","slug":"picking-a-name-for-philadelphias-wnba-team-isnt-just-about-the-right-fit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/1157\/","title":{"rendered":"Picking a name for Philadelphia’s WNBA team isn’t just about the right fit"},"content":{"rendered":"

After commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced that Philadelphia would be home to a WNBA expansion franchise in 2030<\/a>, fans were off to the races trying to suggest potential names for Philly\u2019s newest team.<\/p>\n

The Inquirer\u2019s reader poll<\/a>, which asked for potential team name suggestions, had a few runaway favorites. But just because the fans love the name doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s feasible, thanks to one hurdle \u2014 trademarks.<\/p>\n

The NHL\u2019s Utah Mammoth know the struggle all too well. After holding a fan vote for the team name, the franchise attempted to trademark Utah Yeti and Utah Yetis, but their application was denied, partially because of a company, Yeti Coolers, already owned a YETI trademark, which led to a \u201clikelihood of confusion<\/a>\u201d between competing brands, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean that every option with another active trademark is out of the question, but some names might be more challenging than others to adopt. The WNBA hasn\u2019t yet begun the process of trademarking potential team names for Philadelphia, but Villanova law professor Waseem Moorad<\/a>, who spent 15 years working in the USPTO, said he expects the process to start soon.<\/p>\n

\u00bb READ MORE: https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/wnba\/wnba-natasha-cloud-interview-philadelphia-team-20250708.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to start the branding efforts now,\u201d Moorad said. \u201cThey\u2019ve already filed the paperwork for Detroit, which is 2029, and they already filed it for Cleveland, which is \u201928, so I would expect sometime this year or next year, at the latest, for them to potentially roll out a name because you need enough lead time in case something goes south and enough lead time to negotiate either with the government or some other organization that is claiming rights to that name to pay them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

We looked into some of your favorite options to see what\u2019s open, what\u2019s questionable, and which are already taken by other trademarks, and talked to a few lawyers to get their perspective on how it all works:<\/p>\n

Open for business<\/p>\n

There currently are no active trademarks, applications, or dead filings for Philadelphia Constitution, Philadelphia Bells, Philadelphia Forge, Philadelphia Sound, Philadelphia Jawns, or Philadelphia Spirit.<\/p>\n

That means there should be no legal hurdles to using any of those names, at least from the trademark perspective. However, that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re totally out of the woods. After the team files for a trademark, opposing parties have 30 days to file a notice of opposition, which doesn\u2019t require an opposing party to actually own the trademark. <\/p>\n

\u00bb READ MORE: Before Philadelphia had a WNBA franchise, it had the Rage<\/a><\/p>\n

When the Cleveland Guardians first announced their new name, a competing roller derby team, which did not own a trademark for the name Guardians, filed an opposition, and the two parties came to a settlement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey blocked the name from getting approved at the USPTO by saying, \u2018It would harm us because we are in the same city, we are sports, and so if someone was saying, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s go to the Cleveland Guardians game,\u2019 it could potentially take away business from the roller derby organization,\u2019\u201d Moorad said. \u201cThe roller derby organization didn\u2019t have a federal trademark, they had never filed for one, but they had been in existence for almost a decade. \u2026 They most likely would have prevented the baseball team from getting that name because they were in the same market, and there was a strong likelihood of confusion there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Probably fine<\/p>\n

A number of team name options, especially those used by former Philly sports teams, have dead or defunct applications. It\u2019s possible one of those organizations could oppose a WNBA team\u2019s bid for the name, but to maintain a trademark or rights to the name, a team has to be continuously using it in commerce, trademark lawyer Josh Gerben said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to trademark for a team name, you have to actually use it for that in order to have rights to it,\u201d Gerben said. \u201cYou do get some time if you want to file in advance, but if you ultimately do not use it, then the USPTO says, \u2018OK, you\u2019re done. If anybody else wants it, then they can have it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00bb READ MORE: Philly\u2019s WNBA expansion team is a reward for one man\u2019s lifetime of work<\/a><\/p>\n

Names in this category include the Philadelphia Rage<\/a>, the former name of the short-lived women\u2019s team of the American Basketball League; Philadelphia Fury, the former name of two pro soccer teams in the area; Philadelphia Independence, the name for a planned women\u2019s soccer team in the area which never started play and also the name of a team in a predecessor<\/a> to the National Women\u2019s Soccer League; Philadelphia Founders, a defunct National Grid Iron League team; and Philadelphia Fire, a defunct martial arts organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf something has been filed and it\u2019s abandoned and it\u2019s no longer active with the trademark office, chances are there\u2019s no rights behind it, unless that company somehow still exists and just missed their renewal deadline, but the vast majority of those is that no more rights would be associated with them,\u201d Gerben said.<\/p>\n

Could be a problem<\/p>\n

A few popular fan picks could have legitimate trademark problems. <\/p>\n

Philadelphia Freedoms has an active trademark, renewed in 2023, for a professional tennis team based in the city, part-owned by Billie Jean King. The second iteration<\/a> of the team was founded in 2001 and played its final season in 2020, before World Team Tennis ceased playing in 2021. <\/p>\n

However, the team renewed its trademark for another 10 years in 2023, which means it still has an active trademark over the name until 2033, three years after the Philly WNBA team will start playing. But since a trademark requires use, it\u2019s possible that the team can still find a way to use the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a mechanism called a petition to cancel that you can file against a registration if you think it\u2019s no longer being used,\u201d Gerben said. \u201cIf the WNBA team said, \u2018Hey, this is a defunct business. They\u2019re not even operating. We don\u2019t think they should have rights to this trademark,\u2019 they can file a petition to cancel with the trademark office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another active trademark is for Philadelphia Revolution<\/a>, which is owned by a local junior hockey team based in Warminster, Pa. That team is still active, which makes it more complicated for the WNBA to pursue the name.<\/p>\n

According to Gerben, the WNBA pursuing the name could be an example of reverse infringement. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf the WNBA team came in and started using this name, and then nobody could find the junior hockey team anymore, because any time you looked up Philadelphia Revolution, all you saw was the WNBA team, you can imagine how the WNBA team selecting this name could just literally wipe this hockey team off the face of the planet from a visibility standpoint, and nobody would really be able to find them,\u201d Gerben said.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia Love is another name that could run into problems, thanks to a preexisting trademark for the popular Love Run in Philly<\/a>, which was founded in 2014 and hosts a half marathon and a 7K run every spring. The crossover between the two and their shared space in the sports realm could lead to conflict with the name from the USPTO, which could deny the claim because of similarities, or through the run itself, which could file an opposition.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also unlikely the team will adopt a name that\u2019s held by any other active professional franchises. There are, of course, several examples of teams across leagues with shared names, including the Texas Rangers and New York Rangers, but based on recent history with the NFL\u2019s Washington Commanders, Moorad said it\u2019s unlikely any new team will be able to get a similar name approved. The Commanders initially considered Warriors and Redwolves for their new team name, but discarded both ideas because of pushback from the Golden State Warriors and the Minnesota Timberwolves. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it came down to [intellectual property] rights, this knowledge has really come about in the last two to three decades in terms of really protecting it,\u201d Moorad said. \u201cA lot of sports organizations really didn\u2019t understand their IP rights or the scope of their IP rights, until recently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00bb READ MORE: Here\u2019s how Philly\u2019s WNBA team can avoid the same fate as the Sixers | Mike Sielski<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced that Philadelphia would be home to a WNBA expansion franchise in 2030, fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1433,99,434],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-philadelphia-wnba-team-name-ideas-trademarks-2030","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}