Abdul-Jabbar v.

General Motors Corporation

9th Circuit Court of Appeals
85 F.3d 407 (9th Cir. 1996)

Key words – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, trademark, right of publicity

Facts
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the former basketball star, filed suit against GM and its
advertising agency for violating the Lanham Act, his trademark, and publicity
rights by using his former name, Lew Alcindor, without his consent. GM
during the 1993 NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament aired a commercial
which used Abdul-Jabbar’s former name. Abdul-Jabbar was born with the
name Ferdinand Lewis (“Lew”) Alcindor and played collegiate basketball and
into his early years in the NBA under that name. Abdul-Jabbar converted to
Islam in college and was known among friends at “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but
did not officially change his name until 1971. Since the name change, he had
not used the name “Lew Alcindor” for commercial purposes in over ten years.
Abdul-Jabbar contacted GM about the commercial, which GM promptly
withdrew and by then, the ad had aired about five or six times. The district
court ruled in favor of GM by finding that the Abdul-Jabbar abandoned the
name Lew Alcindor and any other rights associated with it.

Issue
The dispute between Abdul-Jabbar and GM is whether Abdul-Jabbar
abandoned the name Lew Alcindor and whether the ad could be construed as a
endorsement by Abdul-Jabbar.

Holding
The Ninth Circuit held that abandonment of one’s legal birth name is not a
defense against a violation of the Lanham Act because a legal birth name can
never be deemed abandoned through its possessor’s life even if it is no longer
used. The court of appeals also rejected GM’s defense that the use of Lew
Alcindor was a nominative fair use which is not protected under the Lanham
Act because GM’s use of the name constituted as an endorsement by Abdul-
Jabbar of the GM product in the ad. Moreover, the Court addressed Abdul-
Jabbar’s claims under California state law and decided that the right of
publicity protects celebrities from appropriations of their identity which
includes a celebrity’s former name.

Summarized By: Gary Rom