Surfboard shaper Matt Biolos was in high school when he started jotting the word “Mayhem” on his binder, he said, drawing the logo that would later define his now well-known, San Clemente-based surf brand over the next 40 years.
So when he saw singer Lady Gaga’s tour using the same name – with a similar font and likeness to the Mayhem he and business partner Mike Reola have built into a brand synonymous with surf, skate and snow culture, he said he was taken aback.
Lost International LLC, their company that includes the Mayhem brand, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, March 25, arguing trademark infringement, demanding the singer stop using the Mayhem logo.
The sale of apparel and accessories by one of the world’s biggest stars using the familiar name and logo will dilute the reputation of his counter-culture brand that, with her exposure, would now be considered mainstream, Biolos argues.
According to the lawsuit, Gaga, named Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in the suit, announced the Mayhem album and worldwide concert tour on March 7. Shortly after, she started selling T-shirts and other items of clothing with the Mayhem logo prominently displayed, with a nearly identical design as used by Lost on its products, the suit alleges.
“Lady Gaga’s Mayhem soared to No. 1 and shattered records, a testament to her unmatched talent and global impact,” Gaga’s lawyer Orin Snyder said in a statement on Thursday. “It’s disappointing — but hardly surprising — that someone is now attempting to capitalize on her success with a baseless lawsuit over the name Mayhem.”
Biolos said he reached out to the Gaga camp to ask them to stop using his logo for T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats and other apparel as her tour readied to launch, but said he was basically laughed at by her legal team.
“It’s a black-and-white legitimate problem. We reached out going, ‘Do you even realize what you’re doing here?’” he said. “We wanted to talk amicably, to figure out how we could quietly make it go away. We had to write an injunction. We had to go the legal route. We had to defend our trademark. This is my life.”
Biolos said he has been using the logo since his high school silk screening class and it’s even featured in his 1987 yearbook. He started shaping surfboards with the logo that same year, and launched a Mayhem clothing brand around the logo shortly after.
The company has used the logo for nearly 40 years on clothes and surfboards around the country, and has had it trademarked since 2015, according to the lawsuit.
Biolos is well known in the surf culture, with some of the best surfers in the world sponsored by his Mayhem brand and riding the surfboards marked with the logo. Just last year, Biolos was inducted into the San Clemente Board Builders Hall of Fame.
Gaga’s Mayhem gear is already selling online. The lawsuit argues the singer’s merchandise is “substantially similar if not nearly identical” to the surf brand’s merchandise.
“It looks exactly like ours,” Biolos said.
“I can’t stop her from naming her album Mayhem,” he said. “When she uses lettering like our lettering, it’s a gray area. This is a bite on us. The real issue is her selling clothing with our trademark brand name.”
It doesn’t matter how the word Mayhem is written, he argues, it’s the use of the word itself that is an infringement.
“If she wanted to name her album ‘Guess,’ and made T-shirts with the word ‘Guess’ for that album, I can tell you right now, that company is going to stop her no matter how she writes that word ‘Guess’ across a T-shirt,” he said. “The same can go for a myriad of other brands.”
Biolos argued some 20,000 fans will go to a concert at SoFi Stadium and buy apparel with the Mayhem name and logo, and that mainstream market isn’t what his brand is about.
“Our brand is a stand-alone brand, it represents something: core surfing,” he said. “People want to wear it to show they are part of this culture of surfing and snowboarding. After a 50-stop tour, and a million articles of clothing sold, it dilutes our message.”
Snyder called the lawsuit against his client, “nothing more than an opportunistic and meritless abuse of the legal system.”
Though the lawsuit seeks no less than $100 million in damages, Biolos said that figure was likely added by his legal team for shock value and he’s not interested in Gaga’s money.
“We want her to stop selling clothing, accessories or anything that falls under our categories. We want her to not do it,” he said. “Her big problem is, she has an album and tour called Mayhem. It’s a problem she’s got herself into.”
There’s also a responsibility to several licensees who have paid to use the Mayhem logo and name, such as Lib Tech snowboards, the second largest snowboard brand in the world, and DaKine, which also has a Mayhem line for their surf and snow gear, as do Carver Skateboards and Catch Surf, Biolos added.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court, in the Central District of California.