Lady Gaga has defeated a trademark infringement lawsuit filed by the owners of a surfboard brand over her album title Mayhem.
Owners of Lost Surfboards, who have a line of Mayhem-branded boards, sued the pop superstar over the title and logo of her album Mayhem weeks after its release in March 2025.
They claimed that it would cause confusion and make people think the album and surf company were somehow connected.
However, on Tuesday, Judge Fernando M. Olguin ruled that the legal action was too weak to move forward and dismissed the case.
“These allegations are conclusory and insufficient to constitute an explicit indication, overt claim, or explicit misstatement identifying Lost as the source of Lady Gaga’s work,” the judge wrote in his ruling, obtained by Billboard. “The use of a mark alone is not enough… and nothing in the (lawsuit) suggests or otherwise indicates an affirmative misrepresentation in connection with the source or the content of Lady Gaga’s work.”
He noted that expressive works such as album names “implicate the First Amendment right of freedom of speech” and ruled that consumers were unlikely to think an album name was an endorsement of a separate brand.
When they sued Gaga last year, Lost owners accused her of showing a “blatant disregard” of their company’s trademark rights, claiming that her stylised red Mayhem logo was similar to theirs.
In a motion to dismiss, the Poker Face singer’s lawyers described the lawsuit as “a transparent attempt to extract leverage and publicity from the expressive use of a common dictionary word by one of the world’s most recognisable artists”.
They noted that Lost bosses could not “identify a single confused consumer” who thought Mayhem and Lost were connected.
Gaga previously scored a victory in the case in December, when Judge Olguin rejected Lost’s request to stop her from selling Mayhem-branded products.
Lost executives are allowed to appeal the ruling.
