Lady Gaga Says Surf Brand Must Repay $250K Legal Bill After Failed ‘Mayhem’ Lawsuit: ‘A Publicity Stunt’
Categoria: Musica
The superstar says the defeated lawsuit over a “common dictionary word” was costly and never should have been filed.
Por Billboard | 14/09/2026
Lady Gaga wants to be repaid nearly $250,000 in legal bills she spent defeating a lawsuit that claimed her Mayhem album infringed a brand of Mayhem surfboards — calling the case a “publicity stunt” aimed at “extracting” money from her. Lost Surfboards sued the star (Stefani Germanotta) last year, claiming people who saw her album name would think it was somehow endorsed by the surf company. But the case was rejected last month by a federal judge, who said no such consumer confusion was likely. Related Taylor Swift’s Lawyer to Judge: ‘Life of a Showgirl’ Branding Is Protected by First Amendment Billboard to Add Smart Media Albums As Chart-Eligible Sales Formats Duane 'Keffe D' Davis Gives First Interview After Tupac Shakur Murder Conviction In a scathing motion Friday, Gaga’s attorneys say the star should not be forced to pay the huge legal bills ($232,484 in) she racked up beating that case. They say it was “never a legitimate lawsuit” but instead an improper effort to “capitalize on the fame and popularity of Lady Gaga” by suing her over the use of “a common dictionary word.” “A litigant should not be permitted to use the federal courts to launch a publicity stunt masquerading as a lawsuit against a high-profile artist,” Gaga’s attorney Orin Snyder writes in the filing, obtained and first reported by Billboard . “Nor should it be permitted to wield the machinery of litigation as a device for extracting a settlement that the merits cannot justify. This lawsuit was both.” Lost suffered a major early defeat, when the judge ruled it was unlikely to win the case and rejected an injunction that would have forced Gaga to immediately stop using the name on her album and tour. But rather than back down, Gaga’s lawyers say, Lost then “doubled down” and “dug in,” forcing another nine months of expensive litigation — including repeated demands that the star herself sit for a day-long deposition. “A full-day deposition of a world-famous artist at the height of a grueling international tour, in service of claims already held barred, had one function: to make continued litigation so disruptive that settlement became cheaper than vindication,” Snyder writes. “The burden was the point. That is not the vindication of trademark rights; it is the use of federal process as a pressure campaign.” Related Lady Gaga Sets Midyear Boxscore Record on The Mayhem Ball With $236M Gross Lost’s lawsuit, filed in March 2025, claimed that Gaga’s album name a “blatant disregard” of the company’s trademark rights to its Mayhem brand, which it has sold since the 1980s. It argued the name was not only confusing, but that it appeared on the album and merch in a stylized red logo that was highly similar to the one on the surfboards. But for decades, U.S. courts have made it very difficult to sue over the use of trademarks in “expressive” works like books, movies and songs, ruling that the First Amendment right to free speech generally trumps the ri