Not even being among the wokest of the woke corporations will do you any good if you’re thrown to the wolves when a drag queen allegedly violates your trademark.
That’s the lesson being learned in slow motion by Patagonia, the outdoor clothing giant that champions virtually every far-left cause you can think of. In 2020, it went as far as to print “vote the a******s out” on the back of clothing tags, just so you know where they stood.
Considering that it’s a company with over a billion dollars of revenue per year, Patagonia has every right to defend its trademark — the famous font against the silhouette of the mountain range it’s named after. It turns out, it has a slightly famous alter ego to defend it against: “Pattie Gonia,” the enviro-nutcase drag queen persona of a guy named Wyn Wiley.
Wiley has come close to infringing upon its trademarks in the past. According to LGBTQ Nation (a San Francisco-based news outlet that focuses on the kind of stories you’d probably expect), Patagonia has tried to make peace with “Pattie Gonia,” with the retailer saying that it has “engaged in an open dialogue” so that Wiley could “continue her [sic] environmental and social advocacy, brand deals, and other work without infringing on our trademarks.”
In 2022, the company said it wouldn’t object to the drag persona using the name for activism, but not for merchandise sales. In its lawsuit, the company claims this was part of a mutual agreement, according to The New York Times. But just how binding that agreement was appears to be a matter of interpretation.
“At the time,” according to LGBTQ Nation, “Pattie Gonia’s representatives said it would ‘take note’ of the company’s wishes, but never explicitly agreed to them.”
And now, “Pattie Gonia” is — wouldn’t you know it? — selling merchandise, including apparel. So Patagonia is taking him to court, the company announced in May.
Would you ever support Patagonia with your business?
“Given Pattie Gonia’s failure to follow through on the limitations the parties had discussed, working instead to develop and own trademarks for a PATTIE GONIA enterprise, Patagonia believes that Pattie Gonia will not stop compromising Patagonia’s famous brand unless Defendants are restrained by the Court,” the lawsuit states.
“While Patagonia seeks only nominal monetary damages, the harm Pattie Gonia has caused and will cause to the PATAGONIA brand is irreparable and cannot be remedied by money damages or other remedies short of an injunction.”
Among other things, the lawsuit claims that the drag queen is:
“Irreparably harming Patagonia’s goodwill and compromising the capacity of Patagonia’s famous PATAGONIA trademarks to differentiate its products from those that others have created.”
And — again, wouldn’t you know it? — Wiley is claiming that the super-woke corporation is actually a bunch of bigots.
Here is a brief summation of the lawsuit as described by the folks at The New York Times in June, noting why it was taking place (along with a fun helping of woke nomenclature along the way):
According to Patagonia’s lawsuit, filed in January in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the company met with Mx. Gonia in 2022 and she agreed to restrict her use of the “Pattie Gonia” name on fonts or designs that mimic Patagonia’s.
In 2025, the drag queen started selling Pattie Gonia-branded apparel online. Patagonia asked her to stop, the lawsuit said, citing the 2022 agreement. Several months later, Mx. Gonia filed a trademark application, seeking to register the name for clothing, marketing and events.
In a statement posted late Sunday after several online statements from Mx. Gonia, Patagonia said they had hoped to avoid a lawsuit.
“We want to acknowledge any hurt it has caused, especially in the LGBTQ+ community,” the company wrote. “Importantly, we continue to want to resolve this.”The company said “we can do that” if Mx. Gonia agreed to three things: removing the trademark applications, ceasing use of the mountain landscape logo and stopping the sale and promotion of apparel and other products as “Pattie Gonia.”
Wiley/Gonia, unsurprisingly, doesn’t want want to resolve this, if just because he seems intent upon — to steal a phrase from Tom Wolfe — mau mauing Patagonia’s flak-catchers.
According to the New York Times, Wiley/Gonia claimed that Patagonia deliberately filed the lawsuit “at the height of anti-LGBTQ politics and attacks.”
NEW: Drag queen Pattie Gonia releases video after clothing brand Patagonia smacked the climate activist with a lawsuit.
Pattie Gonia (Wyn Wiley) says the company is trying to take his name away because he is doing “irreparable” damage to their brand.
“What they’re actually… pic.twitter.com/G5WTJpLUKg
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 28, 2026
“They looked at this political moment and thought they could pull this off without a pushback,” he said in a social media post.
“If your executives and lawyers continue to pursue this lawsuit, it will make one thing clear: They are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to grind me down so far that I can’t continue to operate,” he added in a letter he sent to Patagonia, according to LGBT outlet Outside.
Again, in response to the letter, Patagonia was apocalyptically apologetic.
“Over the past several years, we’ve tried to find a path forward that would allow Pattie Gonia to continue their work while also protecting the Patagonia trademark,” the letter stated.
“These conversations have included multiple proposals — each intended to support that path — along with ongoing dialogue and genuine efforts to avoid this ending up in court. Unfortunately, we could not reach an agreement.”
You can throw yourselves to the wolves, Patagonia, but it doesn’t matter. This is going to be played exactly how Wiley/Gonia wants it to be played: Patagonia is going to be seen as suing him because he’s hurting its brand image by being a drag queen, when really he’s diluting it by basically using intellectual property that isn’t his to make money.
“There’s a common saying in the trademark world that trademark owners need to actively police and enforce their marks,” trademark lawyer Nancy J. Mertzel told the New York Times, noting that trademarks “become weaker” in the legal realm if there isn’t enforcement
“Even though Patagonia is a very public benefit-minded corporation, they need to protect their assets,” she said. “I think there’s a lot at stake, certainly for Pattie — as a spokesperson, and as an environmental activist.”
In other words, this isn’t exactly rocket science when it comes to trademark infringement suits — but don’t tell that to the establishment media. Will Patagonia finally relent and fall down at the feet of the LGBT community? Will it try to offer another compromise that Wiley/Gonia will “take note” of?
If the company takes the latter path, it should probably listen to the words of Wiley/Gonia himself, regarding what happened in 2022: “That wasn’t a broad agreement about my future,” he said.
Well, his future is up to the courts to decide now. But however it works out, Patagonia is likely to take a lasting PR hit in exactly the kind liberal/leftist market it has courted for years.
Whatever the case, talk about two parties to a lawsuit that definitely deserve each other.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
