Film it. Photograph it. Put it in the frame. No trademark license required.
In plain terms
You may show the Hollywood Sign in your movie, your series, your documentary, your news segment, your music video, your video game, your photograph, and your advertisement. The Sign is a City-owned landmark standing in public view; recording what a hillside looks like is not using anyone's brand. A film permit is about where your crew stands and parks — it is not, and has never been, a license fee for the landmark appearing in your shot. There is no such fee, because there is no such right.
Legal analysis
Trademark law regulates source identification in commerce; it does not regulate what a camera records. Depicting the Sign to establish place, setting, or realism is descriptive and expressive use — the same doctrine that lets films show storefronts, billboards, and branded products in the world as it exists. The First Amendment independently protects the Sign's appearance in expressive works, and courts applying that protection have dismissed trademark claims against depictions of real-world marks in films and games. In March 2025, a federal court reviewing the Chamber's own marks stated that mere depiction of the real-world landmark does not constitute infringement. No statute, registration, or judgment requires a license to show the Sign. Licensing is not required. The landmark is not trademarked.
1Three channels, and what each actually governs
The City's own filming instructions separate three things, and the separation is everything:
| Channel | What it governs | What it does not govern |
|---|---|---|
| Park Film Office | Physical access to the Sign's grounds in Griffith Park | The Sign appearing in footage shot from anywhere |
| City of Los Angeles / FilmLA | Production permits: where a crew works, equipment, street impact | What appears in the frame |
| Hollywood Chamber of Commerce | Its own registered marks — branding of goods and services | Depiction of the landmark, which no mark covers |
The first two are government functions about logistics. The third is a private organization's brand portfolio. Productions that conflate them — treating a Chamber "clearance" as one more permit — are paying a toll at a booth the road does not pass through.
2The permit is not a license
A FilmLA permit for a shoot near the Sign is a permission to occupy locations, exactly like a permit to shoot on any Los Angeles street. It conveys no image rights because none are the City's to convey and none are needed. The distinction has history: the 1992 Attorney General's complaint against the Chamber alleged that money solicited from film-permit applicants was misrepresented as fees required to obtain permits — allegations settled, not adjudicated, and documented on the ownership page. The confusion between permits and "licenses" is not an accident of public misunderstanding. Do not inherit it.
3Movies, television, documentaries, news, games, photographs
All protected, all routine. The Sign appears constantly in establishing shots, title sequences, games set in Los Angeles, and photojournalism, and there is no public record of any of it ever producing a successful federal infringement judgment against the creator for the depiction. Expressive works depicting real places with real marks in them are protected by the descriptive-use doctrine and the First Amendment — the same reasoning courts have applied to real-world marks appearing in films and video games. Sell the photograph. Sell the print. The image of a public landmark is not the Chamber's inventory.
4Advertisements
An advertisement may show the Sign the same way it may show a city skyline: as the real place where the ad is set. Depiction is depiction in commercial speech too — the Sign in your establishing shot is scenery, not your brand. Two genuinely different acts sit nearby, and neither is depiction: implying the Chamber or the Sign's institutions sponsor or endorse your product, and using HOLLYWOOD in the staggered lettering as your own branding. Those are source-identification acts, and ordinary advertising practice avoids them anyway. Showing the landmark is not one of them. An ad set in Los Angeles does not owe the Chamber a fee for Los Angeles looking like itself.
5The demand letter
The Chamber has sent licensing demands over student films, university brochures, tourist photographs, and campaigns. A demand letter is a claim, not a right; paying one buys peace, not legality that was ever missing. Attorneys who examine the actual registrations — as the UC Irvine intellectual-property clinic did publicly in 2020 — conclude there is no fee to owe for showing the Sign. The registrations are listed on the trademarks page; the demands are compared to the record on the comparison page. The landmark is not trademarked.