In the world of high-fashion and even higher-stakes real estate, few addresses carry the ghosts of art history quite like 57 Great Jones Street. Once the studio of Jean-Michel Basquiat and owned by Andy Warhol, the building is practically a temple of creativity. So, when Angelina Jolie took over the space for her new creative venture, Atelier Jolie, it felt like the perfect passing of the torch. But as it turns out, even having an Oscar and a global humanitarian platform doesn’t grant you an automatic “road more travelled” card when it comes to trademark law.
While Jolie is undeniably the more internationally recognized “Jolie,” she has run into a surprisingly sturdy roadblock: a pre-existing trademark for “Atelier Jolie” held by Omnaia Jolie Abdou, a Pennsylvania-based artist who registered the name back in 2021. This is a textbook example of how trademark law prioritizes the ‘first to use’ over the ‘most famous to exist’. Despite the celebrity wattage, the legal battle brewing in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is going to be all about the nitty-gritty of commercial confusion and market competitiveness. In this piece, we analyse this issue, unpacking the legal doctrines and previous cases that would be useful.
The Likelihood of Confusion: Celebrity Wattage Blurs the Lines
At the heart of any trademark dispute is the ‘likelihood of confusion’ test. Trademark law is designed to protect consumers from being tricked. In this case, the Pennsylvania-based Atelier Jolie is already identifying and promoting art, design studio goods, and luxury wear long before the Hollywood version arrived. From a legal standpoint, the core question is: if an average consumer sees a shirt or a studio service labelled Atelier Jolie, would they mistakenly believe it comes from the same source?
i. The Sight, Sound, and Meaning Test
When the names are identical, as they are here, the first hurdle of the ‘DuPont factors’ (the legal standard for confusion) is already cleared. Atelier Jolie sounds the same and looks the same whether it’s in rural Pennsylvania or Manhattan. In the eyes of the law, the visual and phonetic identity is a “total eclipse,” making it incredibly difficult for the newcomer (Angelina) to argue that her brand is distinct.
ii. The “Relatedness” of Goods
Jolie’s legal team has argued that there is ‘no actual competition’ between a local artist in Easton and a global fashion hub in New York. However, trademark law doesn’t require the businesses to be identical. They only need to be related. Since, both the entities are operating in the spheres of art, bespoke design, and apparel, if a consumer reasonably expects the Pennsylvania artist to expand into a New York studio (or vice versa), the ‘relatedness’ factor swings heavily in favour of the original trademark holder.
iii. Sophistication of the Purchaser
While luxury fashion buyers are often considered ‘discerning’, the sheer celebrity of Angelina Jolie actually complicates things. Her fame is so pervasive that it might lead consumers to assume any business called Atelier Jolie is an extension of her brand, effectively ‘reverse diluting’ the original artist’s identity. This is the ultimate irony of fame: the more people know your name, the more likely they are to be confused when someone else had it first.
Competitiveness and the “First to Use” Doctrine
The dispute over 57 Great Jones Street highlights a fundamental tenet of intellectual property: property rights are built on priority, not popularity. Omnaia Jolie Abdou’s studio has been using the name in commerce since 2021, giving her the status of the ‘senior user’. Angelina Jolie, despite her global reach, is the ‘junior user’. In the competitive landscape of the U.S. market, being the ‘first to use’ a mark in commerce grants you a legal fortress hard to breach.
A common misconception that exists is that if your name is part of your brand, you have an inherent right to use it. In reality, trademark law is quite sceptical of surnames. To register one, you often have to prove ‘acquired distinctiveness’, that the public specifically associates that name with your business. While the public certainly associates Jolie with Angelina, they don’t necessarily associate Atelier Jolie with her alone, especially when another artist has already planted that flag in the art and design sector.
Furthermore, the since the brands occupy the same ‘channels of trade’, utilizing online platforms and social media, the geographical distance between Easton and Great Jones Street becomes irrelevant. In the digital age, everyone is a neighbour. If both are vying for the same eyeballs in the ‘art-adjacent’ market, the law protects the incumbent to ensure they aren’t crowded out by a celebrity-funded juggernaut.
How Others Have Navigated These Waters
i. The Rihanna Resolution: Surnames as a Family Feud
Rihanna’s venture into the ‘Fenty’ empire—encompassing beauty, skin, and fashion—is arguably the gold standard for celebrity brand building. However, the path was littered with legal landmines, most notably a $75 million lawsuit against her own father, Ronald Fenty. This case perfectly illustrates the limits of the right to use one’s own name in a commercial context.
Under U.S. trademark law, a surname is initially considered ‘merely descriptive’ and generally ineligible for protection. To own it, you must prove acquired distinctiveness. This means that when a consumer hears “Fenty,” they don’t think of a family in Barbados, but specifically of Rihanna’s products. Rihanna succeeded by flooding the market with so much commercial ‘noise’ that the name became synonymous with her brand identity, effectively silencing other commercial uses of the surname in the beauty and apparel sectors.
Even when Rihanna’s father argued that as a Fenty, he had an inherent right to use his name for his talent agency, Fenty Entertainment, the court disagreed. It held that while he did have a right to his name personally, he did not have an unfettered right to use it commercially if it creates a ‘false designation of origin’. Because Rihanna had already established a “secondary meaning” for Fenty in the entertainment and fashion worlds, her father’s use was deemed a source of confusion, regardless of his birth certificate.
ii. The Hailey Bieber Blueprint: Surviving the “Rhode” to Litigation
Hailey Bieber’s “Rhode” skincare saga was a pure street fight over market proximity. Hailey wanted to use her middle name, Rhode, for her skincare line, but a high-end fashion brand by the same name had been around since 2014.
The original Rhode fashion brand sued Hailey for ‘reverse confusion’. This occurs when a massive ‘junior user’ (Hailey) enters the market and, through sheer marketing muscle, makes the public believe the ‘senior user’ (the original brand) is actually the infringer. The court had to weigh whether a skincare brand and a clothing brand were close enough to cause a ‘likelihood of confusion’. Initially, the judge ruled in Hailey’s favour, noting that clothing and skincare were distinguishable enough for the brands to coexist, at least for the duration of a preliminary injunction.
Despite the early win, Hailey’s team eventually settled the suit in mid-2024. Why? Because the “possibility of confusion” is a moving target. As Hailey’s brand expanded, the likelihood that she would ‘bridge the gap’ into clothes (which she has recently begun doing) made the legal risk of a trial too high. A settlement often involves a co-existence agreement, where the celebrity pays for the right to use the name in specific categories while staying out of the senior user’s original ‘lane’.
The European Perspective
In crossing the borders to German and European Law, for comparison, the relationship between trademark priority and personal name rights has been extensively litigated. Courts have consistently rejected a rigid “name versus trademark” hierarchy and instead apply a context-specific balancing test, taking into account priority, scope of use, and the degree of public recognition of the name.
As a starting point, trademark law in Europe adheres to the priority principle, like in the above mentioned cases and in US-Law, according to which earlier filing or registration establishes seniority. German courts have repeatedly confirmed that personal names are, in principle, registrable and enforceable as trademarks, irrespective of whether they coincide with the name of a natural person (BGH, Rosa Luxemburg, GRUR 2003, 428, 429). Priority alone, however, does not conclusively determine the outcome of a conflict.
Under German law, earlier personal name rights may prevail pursuant to § 12 BGB if the trademark use constitutes an unlawful usurpation of the name and interferes with the legitimate interests of the name holder. The Bundesgerichtshof has clarified that such interference requires a risk of misattribution or association, not merely the identity of names (BGH, Shell, GRUR 2008, 1099, 1101; BGH, Maxem.de, GRUR 2012, 304). The decisive criterion is whether the relevant public assumes an economic, organisational, or personal connection between the trademark use and the individual bearing the name.
European case law follows the same functional approach. In PICASSO / PICARO (C-361/04 P, EU:C:2006:25, paras. 55–57), the Court of Justice held that the mere fact that a trademark corresponds to a famous personal name does not automatically preclude registration or enforcement. Rather, the fame of the name may influence conceptual perception, which must be assessed as part of the global appreciation of likelihood of confusion under Article 8(1)(b) EUTMR.
This reasoning was further refined in MESSI (C-449/18 P, EU:C:2020:297). The Court found that the exceptional reputation of Lionel Messi meant that the relevant public would immediately associate the sign “MESSI” with the individual, thereby excluding a likelihood of confusion with earlier trademarks containing similar elements. Crucially, the Court did not establish a general precedence of famous personal names, but recognised reputation as a perception-shaping factor capable of neutralising similarity.
German courts have adopted a comparable stance in cases involving highly prominent individuals. In Marlene Dietrich (BGH, GRUR 2000, 709, 711), the Court emphasised that the commercial use of a famous name may infringe personality rights where it exploits the name’s reputational value without sufficient justification. At the same time, the BGH has stressed that notoriety does not automatically exclude trademark protection, but may both reduce confusion or intensify the risk of unfair exploitation, depending on the manner of use (BGH, Lila Postkarte, GRUR 2005, 583).
From a temporal perspective, German and EU courts agree that the date of trademark registration is not dispositive where the personal name had already acquired recognition or distinctiveness prior to filing. Earlier name use may qualify as an “earlier right” within the meaning of Article 8(4) EUTMR if it confers a legally protected position under national law, even absent formal commercialisation (cf. EuG, Bainbridge, T-194/03, EU:T:2006:65; BGH, sr.de, GRUR 2008, 912).
Ultimately, the case law demonstrates that conflicts between family names and company or brand names are resolved neither by strict priority rules nor by automatic deference to personal identity. The decisive criteria remain public perception, the function of the sign in trade, and the extent to which trademark use interferes with or unfairly capitalises on a personal name. The jurisprudence thus reflects a nuanced attempt to reconcile freedom of commercial designation with the protection of personal identity, without allowing either to become absolute.
Conclusion
Reports suggest that negotiations for a settlement have been ongoing for months. In the world of high-end trademarks, ‘settlement’ is often code for ‘the celebrity is going to pay a very large sum of money for the right to keep their name’. The Pennsylvania artist holds the legal high ground, and Angelina’s team is likely realizing that when it comes to the USPTO, an Oscar is just a paperweight.
Ultimately, the Atelier Jolie saga is a sobering reminder for artists and entrepreneurs alike: do your homework before you sign the lease. Angelina Jolie’s struggle proves that the legal sanctity of a trademark is remarkably indifferent to who is wearing the brand. Whether you’re a local curator or a global icon, the rules of confusion and competition apply equally. This should also serve as a masterclass in IP due diligence.
Angelina Jolie might be the one with the keys to Basquiat’s studio, but until she clears the trademark hurdle, her brand is still just a “guest” in the house of intellectual property.