CLEVELAND — Up and down the Cleveland Spiders website, you can find t-shirts, hats and beanies. It’s a locally owned clothing company whose owner Adam Barrington said is about four years old.
Barrington said he has clients from all over the country like Shelly Harrington.
“Actually, we had a bunch of mutual friends in common on Facebook and he had sent me a friend request,” said Harrington. “Then he introduced himself and said, ‘Check out some of my stuff and see if you like it.’”
Social media has benefitted the small clothing brand for Barrington.
“So, I found out about Cleveland Spiders through social media and I just really liked the designer of it and I try to frequent small businesses as much as possible,” said Cindy Gersch.
Barrington recently filed to trademark his brand and was shocked to learn the Cleveland Guardians filed a notice of opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with the goal of blocking his trademark.
The team’s attorney cited several reasons for opposition much of which pointed to a belief that consumers would be confused because the team once carried the name the Cleveland Spiders from 1887 to 1899.
“We respect that they [the Guardians] need to protect their intellectual property, but we just don’t see the confusion in this particular case, and I may note that this name was inactive for over 100 years,” said Barrington's attorney Todd Wengrovsky.
In fact, Barrington has a disclaimer on his website informing customers that is not affiliated with the Guardians.
“It’s crap, you can’t confuse the two,” said Harrington. “The whole Cleveland Guardians thing is a bully issue. This isn’t an ‘Oh my gosh our brand, someone is going to get them confused and not know whose is whose.’”
“There was absolutely no confusion whatsoever,” said Gersch. “I loved the logo, I loved the way that it looked and not in a million years did I think it was anything besides a clothing brand.”
News 5 reached out to the Guardians and a team spokesperson declined to comment, meantime Wengrovsky said he and Barrington don't plan to back down.
"Most of these cases settle, the question is usually when rather than if in my experience," said Wengrovsky. "Since we don’t believe there is a confusion issue and because Adam doesn’t run a baseball club I certainly see ways we can get this resolved."
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