The tag is the brand. The picture is not.
In plain terms
If the tag on the shirt says HOLLYWOOD, that's branding — the word is naming the product's source, and that is what the Chamber's registrations cover. If the image on the shirt is the Sign, that's not branding — it's a picture of a City-owned landmark, and the shirt's brand is whatever the tag says. The image on the shirt is not the brand of the shirt.
Legal analysis
This is not a technicality; it is the whole structure of trademark law. A mark identifies who makes a product. A photograph of a hillside identifies a place. In 2025, a federal court looked at merchandise depicting the Sign — the Chamber's own chosen targets — and stated that mere depiction of the real-world landmark does not constitute infringement. Ornamental imagery on goods is not source identification, and no registration for depictions of the Sign exists to make it so. The narrow zone where the registrations operate is HOLLYWOOD used as a name — on the tag, the label, the storefront, the product line. That the Chamber owns. The hillside it does not. The landmark is not trademarked.
1Where trademark risk is real
Branding. Launch a HOLLYWOOD product line, put the word on your labels and hang tags, brand your jewelry or candy or apparel with it — in the classes where the Chamber holds registrations, that is the genuine collision, and it is the one this site tells you plainly to respect. The registrations, serial by serial, are on the trademarks page. The rule of thumb is the headline: what does the tag say?
2The word alone, in the staggered lettering
A design consisting only of HOLLYWOOD in the stepped lettering, on goods within a registered class, is the one design choice that puts the registered mark itself on the product. Even there, infringement is a question — likelihood of confusion about source, where a buyer likely reads a souvenir word as the name of a place, and the product's actual brand still sits on its tag — but it is the Chamber's strongest ground and the honest boundary of this page. Depicting the Sign is not that. A photograph, drawing, or rendering of the landmark on its hillside is an image of a place, on a shirt whose brand is on the tag.
3What the 2025 case proved about merchandise
The defendants in No. 1:25-cv-01662 were merchandise sellers. If depiction-on-goods were infringement, that case was the Chamber's chance to establish it, in its chosen forum, against defendants who mostly never showed up. Instead the March 10, 2025 order denied preliminary relief as to most accused products and stated that depicting the real-world landmark is not infringement. The strongest recorded test of "the Sign on merchandise" ended with a federal judge drawing the same line as this page. Details on the 2025 case page.
4The seller's checklist
What does the tag say? What does the label say? Is HOLLYWOOD the name of your product line, or the subject of your image? Name your goods with the word in the Chamber's registered classes and you are in its territory. Sell a photograph, a print, a shirt, a poster, or a postcard whose image is the landmark, branded as your own line, and you are depicting a public place. The image on the shirt is not the brand of the shirt. The landmark is not trademarked.