Grady Memorial Hospital in legal dispute over “Grady Baby” brand

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Just off the beltline in Atlanta’s Inman Park, there’s a catchy clothing business in the public eye.

Grady Baby Company and Apparel find themselves in a legal battle over trademark issues pertaining to the Grady Baby phrase.

“We received a cease-and-desist letter from Grady Memorial Hospital and their claim is that they own the trademark Grady Baby that it belongs to them,” Grady Baby Co. & Apparel attorney Amber Saunders.

It turns out that the clothing store’s attorney told us they received the Grady Baby trademark from the federal government last year and they own the rights to the phrase fair and square.

“We think it’s a shame that a large institution like Grady would try and shut them down,” Saunders said.

Grady Memorial Hospital took it a step further. This week, they filed a lawsuit against two separate businesses in the metro area which are using the term, Grady Baby.

The hospital claims they have used the Grady Baby term on their own apparel including t-shirts and onesies for babies for many years and that the hospital owns common law rights to the phrase.

“Grady Memorial Hospital is absolutely picking on the little guy there’s no way they haven’t known that this company existed for this amount of time and through the trademark process they had an opportunity to object, and they didn’t,” Saunders said.

Grady Memorial Hospital released the following statement:

“GRADY BABY has been a valued phrase and trademark owned by Grady. It has been used by Grady for many years and directly refers to the hospital. We own the rights to both gradybaby.com and gradybaby.org We learned that two local companies were engaged in litigation over this trademark. Grady was forced to file our own lawsuit to protect the integrity of the GRADY BABY trademark. We do not think it is right to have any third party – including the two companies we filed suit against – misappropriate the GRADY BABY name and mark for their own use and profit without our permission. We are concerned that their unauthorized use could lead to public confusion and even usurp our right to use our own name and trademark.

We first sent letters to the two companies, asking them to stop the unauthorized use. We felt we had to take legal action when they did not agree to stop. We are asking the court to order them to stop using GRADY BABY for their merchandise and anything else. We also asked the court to direct the Trademark Office to invalidate Mr. Albritton’s trademark registration and to order both companies and their owners to stop trying to claim ownership over our GRADY BABY trademark.”

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