Luka Doncic in legal war against his mother
The Dallas Mavericks player wants to get full control of his brand, with which he has no affiliation and which has been owned by Mirjam Poterbin since 2018.
Luka Doncic is currently concentrating on playing with the Slovenian national team in Germany as they compete in Eurobasket 2022, a tournament in which he is making his mark and in which he scored a total of 83 points in the last two games.
But the Dallas Mavericks star doesn’t just have basketball on his mind this week, as he is immersed in a legal dispute over the control of trademarks bearing his name. The most surprising thing is that on the other side of the fight is his mother, Mirjam Poterbin, who refuses to give him the rights as he wishes.
Doncic files petition at patent office
NBA insider Marc Stein said the athlete filed a petition last Tuesday with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel the registration of ‘Luka Doncic 7′. According to the Brown Rudnick law firm that represents Doncic, the rights currently belong to his mother and this step taken by the Slovenian is the last in a process that has been going on for months. Doncic intends to take total control of the brands which bear his name.
“I have a lot to look forward to as I continue to grow as a player and as a person and it’s important to me to control my own brand,” the 23-year-old said in a statement to The Stein Line.
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Doncic had given Poterbin consent to register his full name as a trademark in his first NBA season in 2018. Some time later he began to try to negotiate the transfer of control, and in the summer of 2021 he notified in writing that he wanted to revoke that consent.
Three months later, Doncic unveiled his new logo along with the Jordan signature, a seal that combines his initials and his number 77, and which can also be seen on the two courts he refurbished in the city where he grew up, in Ljubljana. The player, seeing that the negotiations did not come to fruition, tried to create his own brand under the name of ‘Luka Doncic’, but the USPTO denied him.
Doncic: No hand in the companies with his name
According to the information provided by Stein, Doncic has no affiliation with the companies that market the LD77 brand operating on a website under the athlete’s name and which are managed by Poterbin and by Boris Pozeg as director. Even the Luka Doncic charitable foundation created in 2021 with headquarters in Dallas has nothing to do with the one in Slovenia with the same name.
The Slovenian and his legal representatives would have tried for weeks to keep this matter from coming to light, at least until they filed the last appeal with the USPTO. The player intends to achieve full control of his name, his brand, his foundation and all the commercial matters associated with it, since the status of the conflicting trademarks prevents him from benefiting from his own name- one that is recognized throughout the world.