How a baseball team in Hamilton ended up in a legal fight with the St. Louis Cardinals

The Hamilton Cardinals, a club part of the Canadian Baseball League. (Hamilton Cardinals Baseball Club Inc.)

Birds of a feather flock together but not when it comes to baseball teams.

In this case, Major League Baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals are taking issue with a much smaller Canadian team bearing a similar name and logo. The Hamilton Cardinals, a member of the Canadian Baseball League (CBL), is facing opposition from the American team as they attempt to register their trademark in Canada.

The Hamilton franchise filed its application with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office in 2023, not long after majority owner Eric Spearin took over the team in September 2022 and the club changed its logo.

For Spearin, the rebrand was about grounding the team more firmly to its roots.

“When I acquired the team, I wanted to kind of rebrand it, to have a little bit more of a Hamilton-specific logo,” Spearing said in an interview with CTV News Toronto.

“The Cardinals name remained the same, but yeah, we created a cardinal with a bat over its shoulder, and the bat weight is in the shape of a hammer, of course, for Hamilton.”

Trademark records show three applications filed by the Hamilton Cardinals on March 7, 2023. More than two years later, in April 2025, the St. Louis Cardinals formally opposed all of them.

“I’m still pretty shocked by it,” Spearin said. “We’re a Canadian team, Canadian trademark, we don’t play in the U.S. whatsoever. So, it was interesting that St. Louis was opposing it.”

The contrast between the two clubs is stark, Spearin noted. Hamilton plays in front of crowds of around 3,000 people at their home stadium, while St. Louis operates on a vastly different scale, playing in front of roughly 41,00 fans whenever they play at Toronto’s Rogers Centre.

Statement of opposition

The American club’s argument, in part, hinges on confusion: fans or consumers could mistakenly believe the Hamilton team’s branding is connected to, endorsed by, or affiliated with the MLB franchise.

In a statement of opposition filed by St. Louis Cardinals LLC, dated June 5, 2025, the franchise argued the Hamilton club was attempting to benefit from the “reputation and goodwill” connected to the MLB team’s trademarks.

The statement notes Hamilton’s application could “deceive consumers” into associating the two teams. In the statement of opposition, the American club argued that the Hamilton team had also used iterations of the St. Louis team’s logos in the past “intended to mimic, reference, and evoke” the team through past merchandise, uniforms and advertising.

The St. Louis club pointed to an instance where the Hamilton team changed their name from the Thunderbirds to the Cardinals soon after the MLB team’s World Series win in 2011.

Spearin noted, however, that the Hamilton team had been called the Cardinals for several years before.

“I feel like they should look a little bit more deeper into that history and that coexistence has occurred for a very long time,” he said.

A source familiar with the matter tells CTV Toronto the MLB has been working to negotiate an amicable resolution between both clubs, one that makes it clear the two teams are unconnected and distinct. They noted how important it is for the St. Louis Cardinals to protect their registered marks, especially as the league the Hamilton Cardinals plays in has officially transitioned to a fully professional league.

The Canadian Baseball League, it should be noted, has a team-wide salary cap of $30,000 a month combined. The St. Louis Cardinals have a bottom-third payroll in Major League Baseball but will still pay out more than $111 million in player salaries this year.

‘Trademark registration isn’t a positive right’

John Simpson, founder and principal at Shift Law, explained that the crux of this particular matter is not so much that the Hamilton Cardinals applied to use the logo, but the fact they registered their logo to begin with.

“A trademark registration isn’t a positive right,” Simpson said in an interview with CTV News Toronto. “It isn’t a right to use a trademark. In fact, it’s a right to exclude others from using a trademark.”

The trademark and copyright lawyer expressed some surprise that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office approved Hamilton Cardinals application, noting how the federal office reviews applications to ensure what is being submitted is not “confusingly similar” with a trademark that is already in the registry.

The St. Louis club long secured its intellectual property north of the border with Canadian trademark registrations approved for numerous logos, some dating back decades.

“I’m a bit surprised that the trademarks office didn’t refuse this application on that basis. They approved it, which then sends it to the next phase of the registration process, where anyone can oppose the registration based on any number of grounds,” Simpson said.

“It was only because the trademarks office initially approved it that the St. Louis Cardinals said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa … that’s not registerable because only the St. Louis Cardinals are allowed to have registered trademarks with Cardinals in it.’”

Spearin said it “would be nice” if an agreement could be made between the two clubs.

“We don’t want to change our team name or team logo at all,” he said. “We haven’t even really thought that far because we do believe pretty strongly in our position.”

St. Louis Cardinals LLC has until June 26 of this year to file more evidence in the case, according to the trademarks database. The Hamilton team’s first game of the inaugural CBL season starts May 15.