The Toronto Maple Leafs Are Suing Snoop Dogg Over His Weed Company

If there’s one thing Snoop Dogg is known for outside of some extremely catchy hooks in the 90s, it’s that he loves marijuana. The Doggfather’s perchance for weed is well-known, and with legalization and commercialization of cannabis slowly taking hold across these United States it seems obvious that Snoop would be involved in the sale of the decriminalized drug.

But it seems the branding of Snoop’s weed company has irked another entity located in another land where cannabis has also been made legal: Canada. That’s right, the Toronto Maple Leafs have a beef with Snoop dog over the name, wordmark and logo of his weed company — Leafs By Snoop. Yes, legal trouble has found Snoop Dogg by way of the National Hockey League, as the Leafs of Toronto contend that his Leafs violate their American trademark in a variety of ways.

According to The Independent, the team filed suit in the United States against Leafs By Snoop last year, claiming they have trademark on the word ‘leafs’ and the maple leaf pattern the team uses as its primary logo. The team claims that Snoop’s company logo looks too similar to their own.

The Maple Leafs currently have a different logo than they did for long parts of their history. The team’s current logo was adopted in 2016 and has 31 points and 17 veins, for the record. It was the first design change in 45 years for Toronto, which changed its nickname from the St. Pats to “Leafs” in 1927.

One could argue the team’s former 11-point leaf actually looked more like Snoop’s logo than their current design, but the hockey team also contends the spelling of “leafs” and the way the wordmark is displayed in the design is at issue here as well.

“Over 90 years ago, the Maple Leafs adopted as one of their key brand names the trademark LEAFS. They have used their LEAFS mark in United States commerce since 1927. The LEAFS mark reflects a highly unusual and distinctive spelling, since the plural of the English language word “leaf” is usually presented as “leaves,” not “leafs.””

The problem with the suit is that using slightly different spellings of things is kind of what Snoop Dogg — neé Lion — does all the time. And as many have pointed out, the basic design of each company may be based on the same general concept — a plant leaf — but the two are clearly referencing a different kind of leaf.

Whether the Maple Leafs have a claim here isn’t exactly clear, but they’re being aggressive in defending their copyright in the United States, even if people on social media disagree with their calls of copyright infringement. Either way, we hope it doesn’t impact his budding career as a hockey announcer.

[via Narcity]