Roller Derby Team Sues Cleveland Guardians Over 'Identical Names'

CLEVELAND — Earlier this year, the Cleveland Indians announced they would officially change their team name to the Cleveland Guardians. Shortly thereafter, the team hit a snag.

The name — Cleveland Guardians — was already in use. A men's roller derby team had already been dubbed the Cleveland Guardians.

“Two sports teams in the same city cannot have identical names," the roller derby squad said in its lawsuit. "Major League Baseball would never permit 'Chicago Cubs' lacrosse or 'New York Yankees' rugby teams to operate alongside its storied baseball clubs and rightly so. Confusion would otherwise result. Imagine seeing a 'New York Yankees' shirt for sale and buying it. Which team did you just support?”

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In an email sent to Patch, the Cleveland baseball team issued the following statement

"We have been and continue to be confident in our position to become the Guardians. We believe there is no conflict between the parties and their ability to operate in their respective business areas.”

A Rolling History

The Cleveland Guardians roller derby team came into existence in 2013, according to court documents obtained by Patch. The team name was officially registered with the Ohio Secretary of State in 2017.

The roller derby team said it was active through 2020, but was derailed by the pandemic. However, the team's blog went dark in 2018 and then reactivated in 2021, around the time news of this lawsuit went public. The team's Facebook has posted more consistently, though there are sporadic stretches of inactivity.

Both teams had initial conversations about the baseball team using the Guardians name. The baseball team had conversations about buying the intellectual property of the Guardians, court documents said, but the roller derby team's owner, Gary Sweatt, grew wary of possible name confusion and losing the cache he had built for his squad.

“On June 22, 2021, Mr. Sweatt therefore emailed the Cleveland Indians’ lawyer and made it clear that if the club still wanted to use the CLEVELAND GUARDIANS name, it needed to buy out the Cleveland Guardians’ rights and the roller derby team would then rebrand,”court documents filed by the roller derby team said.

The then-Indians responded with an offer that Sweatt's team found “unreasonable.” He counteroffered, and the baseball team never responded to his emails.

The Indians officially become the Guardians in March 2022. Sweatt claimed his roller derby team has already suffered from the mass “confusion” caused by two teams sharing the same name.

“For example, after the Indians’ July 23 announcement, the Cleveland Guardians’ www.clevelandguardians.com website crashed after being overwhelmed by an influx of users who were looking for information about the baseball team,” court documents said. Prior to the baseball team's announcement, the roller derby website got fewer than a few dozen visits per day.

In the nine hours after the name-change announcement, the website received 180,000 visits.

The roller derby team said it is also now having trouble with its merchandise suppliers, many of which now refuse to fulfill orders because they believe the baseball team holds sole rights to the team name.