Cleveland's MLB Team Removes 'Indians' Name as New Era Dawns

Cleveland's Major League Baseball team, formerly known as the Cleveland Indians, has begun removing signage bearing the ''Indians'' name at Progressive Field, as the team prepares to enter a new era next season.

Amid pressure from Native Americans and progressive activists, the team announced in July that their new name will be the Cleveland Guardians, starting in the 2022 season.

For Native American activists, the name change is welcome. After the revelation of the new Cleveland Guardians name in July, the Cleveland Indigenous Coalition and the Lake Erie Native American Council praised the change. The feeling of ''out with the old, in with the new'' was apparent as the first letters on the 80-foot-long ''Indians'' sign started coming down Tuesday.

Wind delayed the removal for a few hours, and the full sign will be placed in storage as the team reviews its options for a permanent location for the sign. The replacement sign will be a new ''Guardians'' sign, which will be installed before Opening Day 2022.

While the name change appears guaranteed, one significant snafu is a Cleveland-based roller derby team of the same name. The Cleveland Guardians roller derby team sued the Cleveland Guardians baseball team over trademark issues on Oct. 27 to stop the MLB team from using the same name.

The roller derby team has been the Cleveland Guardians since 2013. After negotiations between the two teams over the summer, the roller derby team mentions in its lawsuit, ''A Major League club cannot simply take a smaller team's name and use it for itself,'' the lawsuit said. ''There cannot be two ‘Cleveland Guardians' teams in Cleveland, and, to be blunt, Plaintiff was here first.''

The lawsuit against the recently renamed Cleveland Guardians also alleges the team filed its trademark application in Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa, which was ''effectively hiding the application unless one knew where to look.''

Negotiations between the two teams ended unsuccessfully on Oct. 26, leading to the lawsuit against the baseball team.

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