Beyoncé’s legal team is still hard at work trying to get her older daughter’s name trademarked.
Lawyers for the music superstar recently filed a motion with the federal trademark office to register Blue Ivy Carter’s name as a trademark, Billboard reports. This follows a ruling from earlier this year denying the trademark to prevent confusion with a single-store clothing boutique in Wisconsin that had used the name since before Blue Ivy was born.
The star’s lawyers argue that the ruling should be overturned, because no one would confuse Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughter with a Midwest clothing shop.
“Nor would a reasonable consumer encounter the ‘Blue Ivy Carter’ mark and conclude that the famous Carter family had teamed up with a small shop in rural Wisconsin to launch a clothing line.”
The “Halo” singer filed for the trademark through her BGK Trademark Holdings LLC just one week after Blue Ivy’s birth in January 2012. At the time, the famous couple faced public criticism, as many assumed they were planning to commercialize their daughter. However, Jay-Z later clarified that they filed the trademark to protect their child from potential commercial exploitation.
“People wanted to make products based on our child’s name, and you don’t want anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name,” Jay-Z told Vanity Fair in 2013. “It wasn’t for us to do anything; as you see, we haven’t done anything.”
Twelve years later, the trademark is still pending. This delay follows a legal dispute with Veronica Morales, who owns a lifestyle event planning company named ‘Blue Ivy’ and holds a trademark for it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office dismissed Morales’s complaints in 2020.
Beyoncé’s attorneys submitted the same trademark registration but encountered a setback in April when a trademark examiner issued a tentative ruling stating that the mark was ‘confusingly similar’ to the name of a Wisconsin clothing store, which has held a trademark for its ‘Blue Ivy’ logo since 2011.
However, Beyoncé’s legal team argues that Blue Ivy Carter is internationally recognized, unlike the Wisconsin clothing store, and should not be barred from trademarking her likeness because of such a small entity.
“Since the moment she was born, she has resided in the American public’s conscience and thus…the consuming public would associate her with a trademark bearing her name,” Beyoncé’s filing states. “The parties each exist and thrive in their own separate worlds and can continue doing so into the future.”
Blue Ivy Carter is gearing up for her vocal acting debut in Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King, coming to theaters on December 20, as Kiara, the daughter of Simba and Nala.
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