What happens when an iconic basketball player, family drama, and intellectual property (IP) rights collide? Nothing good, as we’ve seen this month from the saga of Dallas Mavericks star Luka Dončić.

The 23-year-old Slovenian-born NBA all-star has won accolades up and down the hardwood over the course of his young career. At age 16, he became the youngest player in the history of Real Madrid, a Spanish powerhouse, and in 2018, just three years later, he became the most valuable player of the league—widely considered second strongest in the world after the NBA.

Later that same year, Dončić was selected with the third overall pick in the NBA draft, and his star has risen from there, garnering the 2019 Rookie of the Year Award, winning his first all-star and first-team All-NBA recognitions the following year and reaching the Western Conference Finals in 2022, where his team fell to the eventual champion Golden State Warriors. Dončić has also remained true to his roots, leading the Slovenian national team to the quarterfinals of the EuroBasket competition this summer.

But recently, the massive on-court success of the superstar now affectionately known as “Luka Legend” has unfortunately been clouded by an unusual situation involving his family, his trademark, and his name.

When Dončić first emerged on the scene, his mother, Mirjam Poterbin, registered a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2018 for a stylized logo for LUKA DONCIC 7, after his Real Madrid uniform number:

Poterbin presented the original filing with Dončić’s permission, as the hoopster concedes in a recent official pleading. “Not surprisingly,” Dončić’s recently filed USPTO petition to cancel the LUKA DONCIC 7 trademark states, “he relied upon his mother, Ms. Poterbin, to provide assistance and guidance for his off-court business opportunities,” including “the filing of an application with the USPTO that led to the Registration. That application was filed with Mr. Dončić’s consent (which he granted at a very young age).”

However, for unknown reasons, Dončić’s relationship with his mother soured, and she refuses to hand him control over his trademark. “The maturation of Mr. Dončić on and off the basketball court,” the petition explains, “and his strong interest in pursuing philanthropic endeavors, along with the retention of a personal team of athletic and business professionals, has increased his own business acumen such that [Poterbin’s] assistance in Mr. Doncic’s business affairs has become unnecessary.”

Worse for Dončić, the LUKA DONCIC 7 trademark has become an albatross, as it has prevented him from registering similar tradenames and logos, including LUKA DONCIC 77 and LD77, after his Dallas jersey number:

“I have a lot to look forward to as I continue to grow as a player and a person and it’s important to me to control my own brand and focus on giving back to my communities,” Dončić told NBA writer Marc Stein.

In his cancellation petition, Dončić advances two principal arguments: First, he contends that his mother’s registration of LUKA DONCIC 7 “falsely suggests a connection with Mr. Dončić,” in violation of Section 2(a) of the trademark statute. Second, he asserts that the LUKA DONCIC 7 logo consists of and “is in fact largely comprised of the name that identifies Mr. Dončić without his written consent” and therefore violates Section 2(c) of the same statute.

However, Section 2(a) may not help Dončić here, as the superstar has previously been correctly identified with the LUKA DONCIC 7 logo, and the statute doesn’t consider how it originated.

In addition, while Section 2(c) does require consent, perhaps bizarrely, it does not appear to provide for withdrawal of consent. “It doesn’t feel right, but that’s what the law says,” Virginia Wolk Marino, a trademark attorney at Crowell & Moring, told Bloomberg. “It’s just such a weird case screaming for ‘why can’t you just resolve this?’ This case should be settled. It’s his mother.”

The USPTO likely won’t have the last word on this thorny problem, and appeals are likely as the 2022–23 NBA season gets underway and Dončić takes his best shot—on and off the court.

The post NBA Star Luka Doncic’s Legendary Trademark Battle appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.