Thirteen registrations. Not one of them is the landmark.
In plain terms
A trademark registration is a brand right: it protects a word or logo as the badge of specific products or services. The Chamber's registrations are HOLLYWOOD word and design marks for things like apparel, jewelry, candy, printed goods, and advertising and licensing services. That is real, and it is all there is. None of these registrations is the Sign, covers pictures of the Sign, or gives anyone control over a hillside in Griffith Park. The Sign is a landmark that spells a word. The Chamber owns the word as a brand for merchandise — not the landmark that spells it.
Legal analysis
Trademark rights exist only in a registered mark as applied to its identified goods and services; they are not property in an object, a place, or its image. The Chamber's portfolio consists of word and stylized-word marks in limited classes. The registration that would matter — the Sign itself — does not exist, and not for lack of trying: the Chamber applied to register the Sign in 2004, the USPTO refused, five major studios moved to oppose, and the Chamber abandoned the applications. What remains is a merchandise-branding portfolio being marketed to the public as ownership of an icon. It is not. Licensing depiction is not required, because no registration reaches depiction. The landmark is not trademarked.
1What a registration is — and is not
Every federal registration names a mark and lists goods or services. The right is the pairing: HOLLYWOOD-for-jewelry keeps competitors from branding jewelry with that word in a confusing way. It says nothing about a camera. A word mark styled to resemble the Sign's staggered lettering does not annex the structure it imitates — the resemblance is visual, not legal. The Sign is a landmark that looks like a word; the mark is a word styled to look like a landmark. That inversion is the entire engine of the confusion this site exists to end.
2The portfolio, registration by registration
Thirteen live federal registrations, plus pending and dead filings, all verifiable at tsdr.uspto.gov by serial number. Selected records from the USPTO's public database (status changes over time — the serial number is the authority):
| Serial | Mark | Goods / services (summary) |
|---|---|---|
| 75488743 | HOLLYWOOD | Advertising, licensing, marketing and promoting tourism services |
| 75488744 | HOLLYWOOD | Entertainment services: live performances, concerts, parades, cultural events |
| 75488745 | HOLLYWOOD | Food and drink services; temporary accommodation; licensing of intellectual property |
| 76626156 | HOLLYWOOD | Cosmetics: facial makeup, powders, eye makeup and related goods |
| 77700689 | HOLLYWOOD | Advertising services promoting the goods and services of others |
| 77700715 | HOLLYWOOD | Paper goods: bags, banners, board, gift items |
| 77700775 | HOLLYWOOD | Athletic apparel: shirts, pants, jackets, footwear, hats, uniforms |
| 77700842 | (design) | Advertising and directory services |
| 77758962 | HOLLYWOOD | Candy; snack foods; chocolate-based goods |
| 77758966 | HOLLYWOOD | Computer game software for gaming machines, slot machines, video lottery terminals |
| 77758974 | HOLLYWOOD | Licensing of intellectual property, corporate and well-known brands |
| 78446970 | HOLLYWOOD | Jewelry: imitation and precious-metal jewelry, cuff links, chains |
| 78447057 | HOLLYWOOD | Rental of stage scenery for motion picture and television productions; related entertainment services |
| 78447081 | HOLLYWOOD | Advertising services: signage, stage props and set dressing for use by others |
| 85241029 | HOLLYWOOD | Metal signs; sign-making tools and components |
| 85241032 | (design) | Computer software for geographic data visualization |
Read the pattern. Merchandise categories, promotional services, sign-making, licensing services. Word marks and design marks, each fenced inside its listed goods. Now read what is not in the table, because it is the point of this page.
3The registration that does not exist
There is no registration for the Hollywood Sign. No registration for "depictions of the Sign." No trade dress registration for the Sign's appearance on its hillside. This absence is not an oversight — it is a documented refusal. In 2004 the Chamber filed applications with the USPTO to register the Sign itself, including for use as a stage prop. The USPTO rejected the applications: a place name cannot be registered except as a source identifier for specific goods with proven public association. Paramount, CBS, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, and Universal — the studios who would have been the paying customers of a depiction right — moved against the applications. The Chamber abandoned them rather than fight. The federal register has answered the question at the center of this site, in the Chamber's own prosecution history: the Sign could not be registered, and it is not registered. The landmark is not trademarked.
4What none of this reaches
Depiction. Film the Sign, photograph it, paint it, render it in a game engine, print the photograph, sell the photograph, put it in a movie, a documentary, a news broadcast, or an advertisement — none of that uses HOLLYWOOD as the brand of a product, so none of it is within any registration on this page. The single genuine zone of operation is branding goods with the word, covered on the merchandise page. Everything beyond that zone is assertion, and the comparison page shows the assertions next to the record.