Golden Globes Legal Fight Heats Up As Awards Show Owner Sues Foundation
The 84th annual Golden Globes Awards are months away, but the once boozy and often unhinged ceremony is front and center right now, at least in the court dockets.
Two months after the remnants of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association sued Penske Media Corporation for it’s part in dick clark production’s purchase of the Golden Globes in 2023 with allegations of monopolization and fraudulent misrepresentation, the Penske-controlled Golden Globes is going after the Golden Globe Foundation for trademark infringement and unfair competition.
Now, if you need to take a moment and re-read that to separate the Globes from the Globe, we get that – it’s a lot. This might also be a good time for some transparency to remind everyone that PMC is the parent company of Deadline owners PMX.
In this particular point of legal loggerheads, the Golden Globes say they need a jury to step in and get the GGF to stop trying to muddy the waters.
Putting a lot of emphasis on GGF board boss Raffi Boghosian, the Golden Globes’ four-claim complaint details: “Defendant has adopted and continued using the GOLDEN GLOBE mark as part of its corporate name and in connection with a broad array of activities, including hosting events, conducting auctions, awarding grants, publishing materials, and developing merchandise—activities that are confusingly similar to Plaintiff’s business and have caused and threaten to continue to cause consumer confusion—without authorization from Plaintiff and over Plaintiff’s express demand that Defendant cease such use.”
What the Globes and their Sidley Austin attorneys want from the court and the GGF is an injunction to stop them using said mark and a trophy cabinet of unspecified damages to make sure they don’t try to do it again.
The filing also alleges that “GGF’s activities and use of the GOLDEN GLOBE Mark have also expanded well beyond its stated charitable mission” to now engage “in other commercial and quasi-commercial activities.” In fact, the September 30 filing in federal court insists the non-plural Foundation rejected a 2025 cease and desist letter and cut off licensing negotiations in July 2026 when Boghosian took over the GGF.
Add to that, as well as listing the many HFPA scandals over the years and the havoc and near death it bought to the GG ceremony’s lucrative TV rights, the complaint says the “GGF’s unauthorized and expanding use of the GOLDEN GLOBE Mark is part of a broader pattern of coordination between GGF and the HFPA directed against Plaintiff and its affiliates.”
Then there’s that previous lawsuit. As always, there’s also the money.
“On information and belief, GGF and the HFPA have since entered into or are in the process of finalizing a settlement of the HFPA’s claims against GGF that would result in GGF transferring charitable funds to the HFPA,” the Golden Globes filing of last months asserts.
“On information and belief, the HFPA’s inclusion of GGF as a defendant was a pretext designed to facilitate this transfer, and the settlement is intended to redirect charitable funds to finance the HFPA’s lawsuit and other private disputes against Plaintiff. This coordination between GGF and the HFPA further demonstrates that GGF’s continued use of the GOLDEN GLOBE Mark is not undertaken in good faith, but rather as part of a concerted effort to trade on the goodwill of Plaintiff’s mark while acting in alignment with the HFPA against Plaintiff’s interests.”
Guess what? The GGF don’t see it that way, or at least not with that characterisation.
“The Golden Globe Foundation was created in 2023 as part of the same deal that sold the Golden Globes to the company now suing us,” GGF spokesman Nate Miller said in a statement Tuesday. “That company then promoted our name. The Golden Globes’ president welcomed guests to our first grants dinner, where we gave $5 million to 96 organizations, and publicly thanked Penske Media’s own Robb Report for supporting the Foundation.
They went on to say: “Now that company, owned by Penske Media and billionaire Todd Boehly’s Eldridge, is suing a nonprofit that supports schools and press freedom over the same name it once celebrated. This lawsuit is a transparent attempt to pressure the Foundation, and we will answer it in court.”
As these lawsuits ramp up, so does awards season again.
To that, the submission deadline for the 2027 Golden Globes is October 30 this year. Kicking everything to the other side of the holidays, and Nikki Glaser will be back for a third time hosting the ceremony when it airs on CBS and streams on Paramount+ on January 10, 2027.
