Background
Pepperdine University, a private university in Malibu, California, has long used the “Waves” name and associated branding for its intercollegiate athletic programs. In February 2025—just one week before the series premiere—Pepperdine sued Netflix, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and producer Mindy Kaling’s production company Kaling International over the new Netflix series Running Point.
The show, starring Kate Hudson, tells the fictionalized story of a woman who inherits ownership of a professional basketball team called the “Los Angeles Waves.” The series is loosely inspired by Los Angeles Lakers executive Jeanie Buss, who also serves as a producer. Pepperdine alleged that the fictional team’s use of the “Waves” name, logo, and uniform designs infringed its registered trademarks and amounted to false designation of origin under the Lanham Act.
Netflix and Warner Bros. moved to dismiss, arguing that the use of “Waves” in an expressive work is protected by the First Amendment under the longstanding Rogers v. Grimaldi framework.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Valenzuela granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, applying the two-prong Rogers test—a First Amendment defense that shields expressive works from trademark claims unless the challenged use has “no artistic relevance” to the work, or the use “explicitly misleads as to the source or content of the work.”
On the first prong, the court found that the “Waves” name is artistically relevant to the narrative of Running Point. The fictional Los Angeles Waves basketball team is central to the show’s plot, and the name serves a clear creative purpose within the story.
On the second prong, the court concluded that the defendants were not using the “Waves” mark as a source identifier for the series itself. Rather, Netflix and Warner Bros. are clearly identified as the source of the content. Any association between the show and Pepperdine’s athletic programs was incidental and did not amount to explicit misleading of consumers.
Notably, commentators have flagged a potentially significant drafting error in the order: the court repeatedly stated that the test asks whether the use “explicitly misleads consumers as to the source of the content of the work”—substituting “of” for the correct word “or.” The established Rogers standard asks whether the use explicitly misleads as to the “source or content” of the work. This one-letter change effectively collapsed the content-deception prong into the source-confusion prong, potentially narrowing the scope of the test. Whether this was inadvertent or deliberate may be explored on appeal.
Key Takeaways
- The Rogers v. Grimaldi test remains a powerful defense for creators of expressive works, even after the Supreme Court’s 2023 Jack Daniel’s (Bad Spaniels) decision narrowed its application for uses that function as source identifiers.
- Trademark owners—including universities with sports branding—face a high bar when challenging the use of similar marks in clearly fictional creative works.
- The drafting error regarding “or” versus “of” could become a significant issue on appeal, potentially giving the Ninth Circuit an opportunity to clarify the post-Bad Spaniels contours of the Rogers test.
Why It Matters
This case sits at the intersection of trademark rights and creative freedom that affects every entertainment company, sports brand, and university with valuable intellectual property. The dismissal reinforces the principle that trademark law does not give rights-holders a veto over how fictional works incorporate real-world names and branding—so long as the use serves an artistic purpose and does not trick consumers into believing the trademark owner produced or endorsed the content.
Pepperdine has announced plans to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and the noticed drafting error in the district court’s order may give the appellate court an opening to address how the Rogers test should be applied in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Jack Daniel’s decision. That makes this a case worth watching for anyone in entertainment, sports marketing, or brand management.