In the latest headache for an MLB side that controversially left its former Oakland, California home in 2024, and is still waiting for its new stadium to be built, the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled the term is not distinctive enough to trademark.
A USPTO refusal, filed last month, said the term "athletics" is simply "the purpose and feature of applicant's goods and services," and therefore the application for "Las Vegas Athletics" is "primarily geographically descriptive."
The decision could have major implications for the franchise's ability to fight knock-off merchandise and other third-party uses. But the Athletics can still respond to the non-final action or file a legal appeal.
Established in 1901 in Philadelphia, the Athletics baseball team had already moved twice, to Kansas City and then Oakland, before the latest upheaval.
The Athletics' ownership opted to move the team to Las Vegas after failing to reach a new deal to build a new stadium to remain in Oakland, and received MLB approval in 2023.
Las Vegas's historic Tropicana casino and hotel has been demolished to clear space for the new baseball stadium. The Athletics are currently playing in a temporary, minor-league baseball venue in the California state capital of Sacramento.
Despite having successfully trademarked the Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Athletics names previously, the USPTO found that "claim of ownership of an active prior registration" was not sufficient and that each application is assessed on its own merits.
The "burden of establishing acquired distinctiveness... is commensurately high and requires more evidence," it said.
In a blog post, trademark attorney Josh Gerben said it was "unusual, borderline odd, for an MLB franchise to run into this kind of roadblock."
But, he wrote, because the team has not yet started playing under its new name or in its new location, it cannot produce "marketplace evidence, such as sales figures, advertising spend, media recognition, and consumer perception, that would normally overcome a descriptiveness refusal."
"That puts the organization in a classic rock-and-a-hard-place scenario," he said.