Atlanta Braves Unhappy With Pixar’s Brave

Merida rides in this concept art from Brave. Merida does not play major league baseball for the Atlanta Braves.  All images courtesy of Pixar.

At a casual glance, anybody taking on Disney in a court of law would seem either fabulously wealthy, fabulously nuts, or both.  So, I find this news item of particular interest.  As reported on the Yahoo Sports blog Big League Stew [1], Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves are slinging some arrows at Pixar, challenging them over the name of the upcoming animated feature, Brave.

Pixar’s Brave is an animated feature film, their first fairy tale, about epic battles and mystical legends set in the Highlands of Scotland.  The Atlanta Braves are a professional baseball team, sometimes animated (if Chipper Jones is healthy), set in a suburb of Georgia’s largest city, once very good, lately, not so much, whose epic battles are with mediocre free agent performances, an ongoing lack of clutch hitting and it seems, making sure their fans don’t confuse the team with a Scottish princess named Merida, all cute, impetuous, ready for adventure, wearing a cape and of course, completely digital.

According to the post:

Though the movie will feature a princess overcoming obstacles of some undetermined nature — and not, say, blowing an 8.5-game lead to the St. Louis Cardinals [2] over the season's final three weeks — the Braves are uncomfortable with the similarity in names and have filed several objections to Disney Pixar's trademark applications.

It seems that the Braves trademark does not include the singular form of the word, “Brave,” so they are objecting to certain Disney trademarking efforts.  Stich Kingdom, a website dedicated to all things Disney, details the dispute [3]:

Private negotiations between The Walt Disney Company and the Atlanta National League Ball Club are currently taking place in regards to several of the objected filings with the ball club intending to file an objection against yet another of the registrations. In other words, don’t expect to see Disney/Pixar ‘Brave’ day at Turner Field any time soon (but don’t rule it out either).

Now, if Brave voice actors Billy Connolly or Craig Ferguson played shortstop for a baseball team, say, the Atlanta Braves, I would understand the team’s efforts to protect their brand.  If kids in Fulton County start yelling for the manager to bring in Emma Thompson to close out the 9^th, I’ll give team attorneys the benefit of the doubt.  Until then, this just seems like a silly, and expensive, waste of everyone’s time.  But can’t you say that about most baseball games these days?