Pattie Gonia Lawsuit: Trademark Claims, Parody, and Laches

Patagonia sued drag queen and climate activist Pattie Gonia, the stage persona of Wyn Wiley, for trademark infringement on January 21, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The Patagonia and Pattie Gonia lawsuit seeks only $1 in damages along with legal fees and a court order barring Wiley from selling merchandise under the Pattie Gonia name or registering it as a trademark. The case was referred to private mediation in June 2026 after Wiley publicly rejected Patagonia’s settlement terms.¹²

What Patagonia Is Claiming

The complaint, Patagonia, Inc. v. Entrepreneur Enterprises, Inc. dba Pattie Gonia Productions and Wyn Wiley (Case No. 2:26-cv-0586), alleges trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and unfair competition.³ Two specific developments triggered it.

First, in late 2024, Wiley launched pattiegoniamerch.com and began selling branded apparel, stickers, and other goods under the Pattie Gonia name.³ Second, on September 21, 2025, Wiley’s company, Entrepreneur Enterprises, filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (serial number 99/404,728) seeking to register “PATTIE GONIA” across five classes of goods and services, including clothing, stickers, recorded music, marketing services, and entertainment services such as drag shows and motivational speaking.⁴

Patagonia says the merchandise features a “copycat” logo replicating the silhouette of Mt. Fitz Roy from its own P-6 logo. The complaint identifies gloves posted on Instagram in October 2025 and an outfit made from the Transgender Pride Flag worn at an Out Magazine event in November 2025, both displaying a mountain silhouette with “Pattie Gonia” text. The company also included consumer social media comments to support its confusion claim, including one that read, “I genuinely thought this was a Patagonia ad for too long…or is it?”³⁵

The 2022 Agreement Both Sides Now Dispute

The parties first spoke in February 2022, after Hydroflask contacted Patagonia to confirm the company had no objection to a potential collaboration with Pattie Gonia. In emails exchanged between February 9 and February 16, 2022, Patagonia says the three parties reached an understanding: Wiley could continue performing as Pattie Gonia for advocacy purposes but would not sell Pattie Gonia-branded products, would not use the name as a commercial brand or source indicator, and would not use fonts or designs that copied or closely resembled Patagonia’s logos.³⁶

Patagonia says the arrangement held for about two years. When Wiley began selling merchandise in late 2024, the company alleges it asked her to honor the agreement and was “refused,” and that a follow-up attempt received no response.⁷ Wiley disputes the scope of the 2022 exchange, describing it as a narrow request tied to a single collaboration rather than a blanket restriction on her commercial future.⁸

Why Patagonia Says It Had to Sue

In a statement released the day it filed, Patagonia said it had spent more than three years in “open dialogue” trying to avoid litigation and sued only after those efforts failed. “We cannot selectively choose to enforce our rights based on whether we agree with a particular point of view,” the company said. “Inconsistent enforcement might prevent us from stopping entities like the oil and gas lobby, counterfeiters, hate groups, or other bad actors from using the Patagonia name and logo.”⁷ A company spokesperson later told Outside the suit was “the last thing we wanted.”⁹

Not every trademark expert accepts the framing. Alexandra Roberts, a trademark law professor at Northeastern University, called the “must sue or lose it” argument “a myth or a misconception” and a “moral alibi” for a choice, not a legal obligation. Roberts said declining to sue one party does not typically prevent a brand owner from acting against others later, comparing it to Taylor Swift tolerating fan-made goods while still retaining the right to pursue major commercial infringers.¹⁰

Pattie Gonia’s Response and the Failed Settlement

The case attracted little public attention until May 27, 2026, when Wiley released a video and open letter addressed to Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert, the company’s board, and the Patagonia Purpose Trust trustees. She wrote that the lawsuit left her two options: “erasing my name, my advocacy, my community, and everyone I employ” or fighting.¹¹¹²

Over the weekend that followed, Wiley offered to withdraw her trademark application if Patagonia dropped the suit. Patagonia’s counter-offer required her to withdraw all trademark applications, stop using Patagonia’s logos, and stop selling or promoting apparel and other products under the Pattie Gonia name.¹³

On June 1, 2026, Wiley rejected those terms on Instagram. “No deal, Patagonia,” she wrote, saying the requirement to stop selling merchandise as Pattie Gonia would “erase my advocacy” by cutting off the brand partnerships that fund her education and activism work. She characterized her merchandise as “playful parody and fan art,” arguing that drag is “built on parody, puns and jokes” and that Patagonia was “cherry picking” examples to frame them as a commercial threat. She estimated the litigation could cost her more than $1 million in legal fees.⁸⁵

The Legal Questions That Will Decide It

To win, Patagonia must show that Wiley’s use of “Pattie Gonia” on merchandise and in marketing creates a likelihood of consumer confusion about whether Patagonia sponsors, endorses, or is connected to her products.¹⁴

Parody After Jack Daniel’s

Wiley’s main defense is parody. Recent Supreme Court precedent narrows that defense on the merchandise side. In Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC (2023), the Court held unanimously that when a party uses someone else’s trademark as a “designation of source” for its own goods, the standard likelihood-of-confusion test applies rather than the more speech-protective Rogers v. Grimaldi test. Parody may factor into the confusion analysis, but it does not grant a free pass for commercial goods.¹⁵

Mark Mizrahi, a partner at Saul Ewing, said the Pattie Gonia case maps closely onto Jack Daniel’s. He distinguished Wiley’s expressive work (performances, activism, social commentary), which has stronger protection, from the “product side,” where she is selling apparel and stickers under a name that sounds nearly identical to a famous clothing brand. “This case is not about whether Pattie Gonia…can continue to do what they were doing,” Mizrahi said. “The issue is about going into a new business venture of consumer goods.”¹⁶

How Strong Is the Patagonia Mark?

Patagonia’s complaint calls its trademark “fanciful,” a term that in trademark law refers to invented words like Xerox or Rolex and carries the strongest protection. Roberts called that characterization “shocking and obnoxious,” noting that Patagonia is a real geographic region in South America with its own Indigenous history. She said the label is unlikely to decide the case: geographic names can still function as valid trademarks when they identify the source of goods rather than a place of origin, and Patagonia has built that commercial identity over decades.¹⁰

Laches

Mizrahi also raised the doctrine of laches, which can bar trademark claims when a rights holder waits too long to act. Here the doctrine works in Patagonia’s favor: because the company communicated with Wiley starting in 2022 and sued shortly after the trademark application, it can argue it acted within a reasonable timeframe.¹⁶

Where the Case Stands

The defendants filed their answer on April 29, 2026, after several jointly requested extensions. A scheduling conference was held on June 8, 2026, before Judge R. Gary Klausner, and the court referred the case to a private mediator for alternative dispute resolution. Rocco J. Screnci, an attorney from New Jersey, was admitted pro hac vice on May 29, 2026, to represent the defendants, and the parties filed a joint discovery plan on June 1, 2026.¹

No trial date has been set and no dispositive motions have been filed. The mediation referral leaves room for a resolution short of trial, though the public positions of both sides make a quick settlement look unlikely.

1
CourtListener. Patagonia, Inc. v. Entrepreneur Enterprises, Inc.
2
The Guardian. Patagonia Sues Drag Queen Pattie Gonia Trademark Infringement
3
Business CCH. Patagonia v. Entrepreneur Enterprises Complaint
4
USPTO. PATTIE GONIA Trademark Application
5
Los Angeles Times. Patagonia Trademark Lawsuit Triggers Backlash by Drag Queen Pattie Gonia
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Bend Source. Pattie Gonia Sued by Patagonia for Trademark Infringement
7
Patagonia Works. Protecting Our Brand – Update on Trademark Activity
8
Forbes. Pattie Gonia Rejects Patagonia’s Offer to Drop Trademark Suit
9
Outside Online. Pattie Gonia Patagonia Lawsuit Response
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Heated World. Can Patagonia Own Patagonia
11
Pattie Gonia. Open Letter to Patagonia
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ABC News. Drag Queen Pattie Gonia Calls Patagonia Lawsuit Attempt
13
Time. Patagonia Pattie Gonia Trademark Lawsuit What to Know
14
FindLaw. The Trademark Laws Behind the Pattie Gonia and Patagonia Dispute
15
Supreme Court of the United States. Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC
16
Forbes. Why Patagonia Filed a Trademark Infringement Lawsuit Against Pattie Gonia