Cleveland Indians Sued for Taking the Name of Cleveland Guardians Roller Derby Team

As Major League Baseball fans turn their attention to the World Series, the Cleveland Indians franchise faces a fresh challenge to its efforts to find a new name. The Cleveland Guardians, the long-running, Cleveland-based roller derby team, sued the baseball club on Wednesday in federal court to block it from taking its “Cleveland Guardians” name.

“Major League Baseball would never let someone name their lacrosse team the ‘Chicago Cubs’ if the team was in Chicago, or their soccer team the ‘New York Yankees’ if that team was in New York – nor should they,” said Christopher Pardo, a partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP and lead attorney for the plaintiff. “The same laws that protect Major League Baseball from the brand confusion that would occur in those examples also operate in reverse to prevent what the Indians are trying to do here. By taking the name ‘Cleveland Guardians’ overnight, the Indians knowingly and willfully eviscerated the rights of the original owner of that name – the real Cleveland Guardians.”

The Cleveland Indians announced in July that it was changing its name to the Cleveland Guardians beginning next season, after more than 100 years of using the “Indians” name despite sustained objections from Native American groups and others over the years. 

In the lawsuit, the Cleveland Guardians assert that just because the Cleveland Indians is a billion-dollar Major League Baseball franchise does not mean it can take and use whatever name it wants. According to the complaint, the Indians knew the Guardians existed months before announcing the name change. The baseball club’s lawyers went so far as to make secret trademark filings in the small island nation of Mauritius in an effort to hide its intent to take the Guardians’ name, and then reached out to tell the roller derby team of its plans. When the roller derby team complained to the Indians, the MLB franchise offered a truly nominal amount to buy the team’s intellectual property rights, including its social media accounts and the valuable www.clevelandguardians.com domain name.

“As a nonprofit organization that loves sports and the city of Cleveland, we are saddened that the Indians have forced us into having to protect the name we have used here for years,” said Gary Sweatt, the owner of Guardians Roller Derby. “We know we are in the right, however, and just like our athletes do on the track, we will put everything into this effort at the courthouse.”

The repercussions of the Indians’ planned change to “Cleveland Guardians” have already been severe, although predictable, for the roller derby team. Merchandise suppliers have refused to work with the team, believing it is the Guardians who are violating the Indians’ rights, and the team’s website www.clevelandguardians.com, which it uses in part to sell Cleveland Guardians-branded merchandise to support the team’s nonprofit purpose, has repeatedly crashed due to traffic from visitors who assume the site is associated with the baseball team.

The lawsuit, Guardians Roller Derby v. Cleveland Guardians Baseball Company LLC, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. A copy of the complaint is available on request. In addition to Pardo, members of the Hunton Andrews Kurth legal team include intellectual property lawyers Edward Colbert, Erik Kane, William Merone, and associate Katherine Sandberg.