On the latest edition of her Green with Envy podcast, Chelsea Green shared details about her recent dealings with WWE, who had recently made the attempt to trademark her birth name.
I was in a bit of a legal disagreement with my former employer because they were trying to trademark my name. Not my wrestling name, alias, or whatever – no, no, no. They were trying to trademark my birth-given name – Chelsea Green.
Thank God for Twitter because Twitter clued me into WWE attempting to trademark my name. When I worked for WWE and was about to re-sign a deal with them, I signed my name off to them for that period of time. That’s a very normal thing to do in wrestling, nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, they’re going to want my name for licensing purposes, it’s not just on TV it’s on cards, video games, toys, merch, right?
Green learned of WWE’s continued pursuit to trademark her name by reading about it on Twitter. On August 8th, Green tweeted about the trademark issue stating “I never thought I’d be in a legal battle for my BIRTH GIVEN name…”
WWE used her November 2020 contract as evidence for Green’s consent to the trademark. In April 2021, Green was released by WWE.
What was weird was, fast forward six months later, just a reminder I signed my deal in November 2020, fast forward to August 2021 – all of a sudden this piece of paper that I signed was being handed in as evidence for them to trademark ‘Chelsea Green’. I obviously freaked out right away because if you take away the right for me to use my real name in the entertainment industry I’m screwed. I’m absolutely screwed. I wrestle under this name, I stunt double under this name, I act, I podcast, I do signings, I mean it’s my fucking name. I have no idea how much this trademark would have affected that, but I imagine it was not going to be good for me. So, I felt stuck, and sad, and confused and all of the emotions because I couldn’t figure out why they’d want to take away my ability to make a livelihood, you know?
I honestly, for a second, debated texting my old boss and asking, “What’s going on?” Instead of, you know, maybe doing the more grown-up thing, I decided in that moment to tweet. Now, I don’t usually send out hasty tweets, but I was extra emotional, and we all make mistakes, so I sent out a tweet. The tweet, read, ‘I never thought I would be in a legal battle for my birth given name’. That was it, I didn’t tag anyone, did nothing that would get me in trouble, just a simple Tweet-a-roo.
Green outlined the response by WWE and how the two sides have reached a conclusion with WWE dropping the request to trademark her name:
Well, I guess that tweet did the trick because I ended up getting a call around 8 or 9 p.m. that night on the night of the tweet from WWE saying they were dropping the trademark request and that my name is all mine – woo hoo.
That’s all it was, it was a quick conversation, very civil. I really appreciate that. I would assume it was the tweet that did the trick, I don’t know but I’m sorry I didn’t fill you guys in like I promised I would two episodes ago. I just needed to make sure that all the proper paperwork was sent to me from WWE showing me that the request to trademark my name had been pulled and I needed to know it had all gone through, which I got.
So, all is well in the land of name changes and trademarks, and legal battles. It was momentarily messy but we have it under control people.
The full episode of Green with Envy can be heard on iTunes.
