Disney has been caught up in another legal battle, as the Portland Pickles baseball team has now filed a federal lawsuit claiming copyright infringement against the Disney+ series “Win or Lose.”
Portland Pickles Lawsuit Against ‘Win or Lose’
According to a new article from The Seattle Times, the Portland Pickles is a summer league baseball team based in Portland, Oregon, with a stadium at Lents Park. The team’s name and pickle-themed mascot, named Dillon, were both trademarked in 2016. Both the team name and logo have since been featured on several merchandise items sold in-person at the team’s stadium and online.
According to the article, the Portland Pickles have now filed a federal lawsuit against Disney claiming copyright infringement. Specifically, the lawsuit claims that the fictional team called the Peaks Valley Pickles in the Disney+ series “Win or Lose” is too similar to the team’s existing copyright.
“Win or Lose” is a Disney+ series created by Pixar that exists in the same universe as the “Inside Out” films. The 8-episode series follows one different character in each installment as a middle school softball team, called the Peaks Valley Pickles, prepares for a championship game. The series has already been in the news several times, as former Pixar staff members revealed a storyline about a transgender student was cut from the series. “Win or Lose” later introduced one of Disney’s first openly Christian animated characters in nearly 20 years.
Following the release of “Win or Lose,” Disney has sold merchandise items such as T-shirts with the logo for the Peaks Valley Pickles. The logo for the fictional team features a green pickle wearing a baseball uniform which, according to the lawsuit, is noticeably similar to the Portland Pickles mascot.
According to the lawsuit, the Portland Pickles specifically claim “Disney’s actions were not only intentional but brazen, leveraging their outsized market power to appropriate a brand identity with a decade of goodwill and fan devotion behind it.”
The new lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Oregon and seeks unspecified punitive damages as well as findings that Disney “engaged in willful trademark infringement.”
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