The Sign belongs to the City of Los Angeles. Depicting City property requires no one's brand license.
In plain terms
The Hollywood Sign has been the property of the City of Los Angeles since 1944. It stands in Griffith Park, on public land, under the City's Department of Recreation and Parks. No private organization owns the Sign, the hillside, or any right to charge you for pictures of them. Two private organizations claim roles around the City's landmark — the Hollywood Sign Trust as maintainer, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce as licensor of its "likeness" — and the documents support neither claim as stated.
Legal analysis
Ownership decides this page in one move: a photograph of City property is a photograph of City property. No deed, ordinance, settlement, or registration on record conveys to any private party a right to control depiction of the Sign, and trademark law could not create one — a mark protects branding, not a structure. The 1992 settlement, quoted below, released the Chamber from claims over its marks; it acknowledged no trademark, granted none, and said nothing about depicting the landmark. Licensing is not required. The landmark is not trademarked.
1The City's ownership
The Sign was erected in 1923 as an advertisement for the Hollywoodland development and transferred with the surrounding land to the City of Los Angeles in 1944. City records identify the City and its Department of Recreation and Parks as owning and controlling the Sign and its Griffith Park site. The 1978 rebuild — funded by donors — replaced the letters on the City's land; it moved no title anywhere. Everything else on this page is about organizations operating around City property, not owning it.
2The Hollywood Sign Trust: committed by its own instrument, authorized by no located City instrument
The Hollywood Sign Trust was created by the Chamber in 1978 and restructured by court-approved settlement in 1992. Its trust instrument dedicates it to the Sign's upkeep — a commitment the Trust made to itself. The documented record shows its work on the Sign proceeding under temporary, case-by-case City rights-of-entry: the posture of a permittee, not a delegate. Any City instrument granting the Trust standing authority to maintain, control, or speak for the Sign — NONE LOCATED, and in 2026 the office of Los Angeles City Council District 4, whose district contains Mount Lee, stated in response to inquiry that no such instrument exists. A self-description is not a grant, and the City has now said directly that the grant was never made.
3The 1992 settlement: a cleared path, not a grant
In 1991 the California Attorney General sued the Chamber and its officers — Lungren v. Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, et al., No. BC 041349, Los Angeles Superior Court, with the City of Los Angeles intervening. The complaint alleged misappropriation of charitable assets, commingling and diversion, constructive fraud, and unfair business practices, including that money solicited from film-permit applicants was misrepresented as fees required to obtain permits. Those allegations were resolved by settlement, not adjudicated.
The settlement's trademark language is the entire basis of the Chamber's "the City and State recognized our rights" narrative. Here is what it actually says:
"The Attorney General and the City of Los Angeles do not and shall not challenge the Chamber's exclusive rights to the trade and service marks which the HCOC holds or those which it may create in the future which incorporate the likeness of the Sign or Walk or any of their features." Settlement Agreement ¶ 7, Lungren v. Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, No. BC 041349 — on file, Documents
Read it precisely, because it is doing much less than the Chamber implies. An agreement not to challenge is a release between the settling parties — a cleared path. It is not a grant: only the USPTO registers marks, and neither a city nor a state attorney general has any power to create or recognize federal trademark rights. The settlement acknowledged no trademark as valid, granted none, bound no one but its parties, made no ruling that the Sign or any landmark could be trademarked — and said nothing at all about depicting the landmark. Whatever marks the Chamber holds, it holds because of USPTO registrations with their own defined scope, and that scope is the subject of the trademarks page.
The rest of the settlement removed the Chamber as trustee of the Sign and Walk of Fame trusts, restructured the trusts with court-approved trustees, and set a repayment schedule to the trusts. A document produced by a charitable-enforcement lawsuit against the Chamber is a strange exhibit for the Chamber's authority, and it does not provide any. The landmark is not trademarked.