Las Vegas Raiders Poised to Secure Trademark After Decade-Long Delay
It has been nearly a decade since the Raiders organization filed trademark applications for ‘Las Vegas Raiders.’
The applications are still pending before the USPTO because of squatters who filed trademark applications before the team.
The good news?
Per a January 8 filing made by the Raiders, it appears the USPTO should soon grant the registrations.
The Raiders originally submitted three trademark applications for ‘Las Vegas Raiders’ on August 20, 2016:
But instead of moving swiftly through the registration process, the applications were suspended by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in February 2017. The reason?
Three earlier-filed trademark applications submitted by third parties, commonly referred to as trademark squatters, were still pending.
| wdt_ID | wdt_created_by | wdt_created_at | wdt_last_edited_by | wdt_last_edited_at | Trademark | Filing Date | Serial # |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SAN DIEGO RAIDERS | 02/05/2016 | 86898680 | ||||
| 2 | SAN DIEGO RAIDERS | 02/19/2016 | 86912909 | ||||
| 3 | SIN CITY RAIDERS | 05/14/2016 | 87037288 |
Under US trademark law, later-filed applications must wait until earlier pending filings that could pose a conflict are resolved, even if those filings ultimately lack merit. As a result, the Raiders’ application remained frozen for years while those prior applications slowly worked their way through the system.
That logjam finally cleared late in 2025. All three of the squatter-filed applications that had blocked the Raiders’ filing were ultimately abandoned.
Therefore, on January 8, the Raiders formally notified the USPTO that the prior obstacles had been removed and requested that their long-suspended application be moved forward to registration.
With no remaining barriers, the USPTO is now expected to move the Raiders’ application forward toward registration. While procedural steps remain and final approval could still take several more months, the substantive issues that delayed the mark for nearly a decade are now resolved.
How a single squatter filing caused years of delay
The unusually long delay traces back to one specific application filed in May 2016 for ‘Sin City Raiders,’ submitted a few months before the team itself applied for ‘Las Vegas Raiders.’
The USPTO initially flagged the ‘Sin City Raiders’ application as creating a false connection with the NFL team and refused it on that basis. However, in that same refusal, the examining attorney also identified 13 other pending trademark applications containing the word “Raiders” that could potentially be cited as additional obstacles to registering ‘Sin City Raiders’ if they were later registered.
That procedural detail proved critical.
Because those other applications were cited, the ‘Sin City Raiders’ applicant was allowed (under US trademark law) to keep their application suspended while waiting for the earlier-filed applications to resolve. That suspension, in turn, continued to block the Raiders’ own application.
Had the USPTO refused the ‘Sin City Raiders’ filing solely on false-connection grounds, the matter likely would have ended quickly, and the Raiders’ trademark could have registered as early as 2018. Instead, the added procedural step effectively allowed the squatter to remain “in line,” holding up the team’s rightful registration for years.
It was not until July 2025, after all of the cited earlier applications had either registered or been abandoned, that the USPTO issued a final refusal of the ‘Sin City Raiders’ application, citing the Raiders’ own existing registrations for the word “Raiders” as the basis for refusal.
The hidden cost of not filing early
This is a textbook example of how maddening the USPTO’s first-come, first-served system can be—even for the obvious, rightful owner of a brand.
Trademark applications are examined by the USPTO in the order they are filed. So, if someone beats you to the punch (even a squatter with a weak claim), you can end up stuck waiting years for the process to unwind.
If the Raiders had been able to file earlier, or if the squatter application had been disposed of cleanly at the outset, this registration would have issued long ago. Instead, procedural rules allowed a bad-faith filer to effectively hold the line for nearly a decade.
The broader lesson here applies well beyond professional sports. Any brand, especially one planning a name change, expansion, or city relocation, needs to file trademark applications as early as possible. You may ultimately win, just as the Raiders will here. But if you don’t get in line early, you could find yourself waiting years longer than you ever expected, simply because that’s how the system works.
Josh Gerben, Esq.
Josh Gerben, Esq. is a nationally recognized trademark attorney and the founder of Gerben IP. Since launching the firm in 2008, he has overseen the registration of over 10,000 trademarks and handled over 1,500 trademark disputes. Josh's practice focuses on building and defending global trademark portfolios for clients. These clients include entrepreneurs, private equity-backed businesses, athletes, celebrities, and public companies. Frequently quoted by major media outlets like CNBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, Josh is widely regarded as a leading authority in trademark law.
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