On July 31, 2025, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board sustained cancellation and opposition of the marks IDA’S LEGACY and THE IDA B. WELLS LEGACY COMMITTEE, two marks that were damaging to the Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation, a charitable organization founded and run by the Duster family, descendants of Ida B. Wells. The applications to register the marks were filed in the name of an individual who, although connected with the PAC that used the marks, was not herself the owner of the marks. On this basis, the applications were deemed void ab initio and the cancellation and opposition were sustained in favor of the Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation.
Ida B. Wells was a journalist, suffragist, and civil rights activist who became famous for her investigative journalism about lynching and for co-founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), among many other achievements. Wells’s connection to Chicago is deep; she spent much of her adult life in Chicago, where she and her husband, Ferdinand Barnett, an accomplished journalist, activist, and lawyer, raised their family.
Over the decades, the Dusters and the Foundation have remained active in Chicago (and beyond) through civic engagement and support of causes consistent with the values of Ida B. Wells. Neal & McDevitt attorneys Rochelle Claerbaut and Jeffrey Norberg and the Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation are delighted by the Board’s decision. Read the Board’s decision here.
