Drag queen and environmental activist Pattie Gonia and the outdoor apparel company Patagonia are engaged in a high-profile trademark infringement lawsuit. Patagonia took action against Pattie related to her efforts to trademark “Pattie Gonia”, sell merchandise, and promote her activism and online marketing.
Pattie Gonia has become one of the most visible drag queens in the United States in recent years and is widely known for doing things like hiking 100 miles in drag (complete with a flowing wig of red hair and a perfect smoky eye) to raise money for making the outdoors more equitable. Her prominence makes this case a major news story.
While trademark law can be complex, all you need to know for this story is that a trademark seeks to indicate the source of a product (i.e., where it originates from).
Patagonia Filed an Intellectual Property Lawsuit in Federal Court
Patagonia filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in January, claiming that Entrepreneur Enterprises, Inc., doing business as Pattie Gonia and Wyn Wiley — the person behind the drag persona — had breached a 2022 agreement that restricted Pattie from selling branded products or using designs that were “substantially similar” to Patagonia’s logo. The lawsuit sought nominal damages of $1.
Patagonia’s lawsuit was filed in response to a recent trademark application by Pattie, which claimed exclusive rights to the brand Pattie Gonia for apparel, online marketing services, and promoting public awareness and motivational speaking services that support environmental sustainability and LGBTQ equality.
The complaint said that “Patagonia supports advocacy and activism that promote the environment and inclusion in the outdoors.” For that reason, Patagonia claimed they repeatedly communicated with Pattie Gonia and understood they’d reached an agreement about how Pattie’s advocacy could continue without interfering with Patagonia’s business. But after the trademark application was filed, and Pattie launched a merch website in 2024, Patagonia took action to protect its “iconic trademarks.”
Pattie Responded With a Statement on Social Media
In a statement made on Pattie Gonia’s social media account, Pattie said, “Patagonia told the media they’re only suing me for $1. What they’re actually trying to do is take away my name permanently and threaten me with more than $1M million dollars in legal fees. This is not a brand conflict. This is a corporation trying to erase an activist." Pattie then called on Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.
Pattie explained that she has never used their logo, font, or any other elements of their brand on the Pattie Gonia merch website, and that the examples used in the lawsuit are fan art. She added that drag is built on parody, puns, and jokes, but that she’s willing to never parody Patagonia’s logo again.
She also says that there was never a 2022 agreement — just that Patagonia had asked Pattie to follow certain terms. And that the trademark application was filed because of what happened to a drag queen called Lexi Love whose name was taken from her by a third party after appearing on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Patagonia Responded With Its Own Statement
In response, Patagonia issued a statement, saying “Over the past several years, we’ve tried to find a path forward that would allow Pattie Gonia to continue their work while also protecting the Patagonia trademark. These conversations have included multiple proposals — each intended to support that path — along with ongoing dialogue and genuine efforts to avoid this ending up in court. Unfortunately, we could not reach an agreement.”
From Patagonia’s perspective, enforcing its trademark against Pattie Gonia is about preventing future confusion and erosion of its brand rights, not just this one dispute. Trademark owners are expected to police uses that could cause confusion in their market, and if they tolerate similar names or logos on overlapping goods and services, courts and agencies may later view the mark as weakened or even partially abandoned.
What Do Lawyers Think?
In order for Patagonia to be successful in a trademark infringement suit, it must prove that:
- It owns a valid mark
- Its mark has “priority” (it was created before the allegedly infringing mark).
- Finally, it must show that the infringing mark is likely to cause confusion between the two brands. This is the where most trademark cases are won or lost. If Patagonia fails to show this, its claim will fail.
There are some possible defenses to infringement. One defense would be that there’s no possibility of consumer confusion — that a consumer wouldn’t buy Pattie’s T-shirt and think it came from Patagonia, or wouldn’t think that Patagonia sponsored Pattie Gonia. Another defense would be that the mark does not infringe because the trademarks aren’t actually that similar. A close analysis of the facts will be necessary to determine the outcome. Another factor is the name’s origin. Both “Pattie Gonia” and the brand “Patagonia” are a reference to a stunningly beautiful mountainous region in South America. Legally, it is not dispositive that both originate from a geographic term, but it could be an argument Pattie Gonia makes.
On the other hand, Patagonia’s name and logo are central to its identity and have been used for decades on outdoor apparel and environmental campaigns. The company can argue that it must act when another party seeks to register and use a closely similar name for clothing, marketing, and environmental advocacy, or risk making it harder to stop future copycats. In legal terms, that’s why Patagonia frames this suit as “protecting our brand” and asks the court for orders that would stop allegedly confusing uses going forward, even though it is only seeking $1 in damages. In addition, Patagonia is likely to argue that consumer confusion is likely since both brands engage in environmental activism.
This Isn’t The First Lawsuit About Trademark Infringement and Creative Expression
This isn’t the first time a brand has sued another for infringement when a pun or parody is involved. A few years ago, a unanimous Supreme Court decided that “Bad Spaniels” dog toys were infringing on the “Jack Daniel’s” trademark. The defendant’s chewable dog toys were designed to look like little bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey for your dog — a funny parody.
The company behind Bad Spaniels argued that, under the “Rogers test” (from Rogers v. Grimaldi), it was protected from the infringement claim under the First Amendment because it was engaged in parody. But the Supreme Court didn’t like that approach. Instead, the court applied the standard likelihood-of-confusion test.
Both Pattie and Patagonia have made their terms clear: Pattie says she will stop pursuing a trademark if Patagonia drops the lawsuit. And Patagonia says it’ll drop the lawsuit if Pattie stops using its logos and selling and promoting apparel under the name Pattie Gonia. It’ll be interesting to see how the matter is resolved.
