Selena Scola started performing as Lexi Love in 2004. Over the next six years, she appeared in more than 600 adult films, worked as a featured dancer at nightclubs across the country, promoted companies at industry events, walked red carpets, and appeared on radio talk shows, all as Lexi Love. When she stepped back from adult film work around 2010, she continued to use the name for consulting, independent film, television, music, podcasts, and building a monetized social media presence. In February 2024, she filed for a federal trademark registration of the LEXI LOVE mark, which was approved in March 2025.
That registration is at the center of a salacious lawsuit that just survived its first major legal challenge, and the implications now extend well beyond one name dispute.
In December 2024, Scola learned that a drag performer named Cody Barnes had been cast on Season 17 of RuPaul’s Drag Race under the name Lexi Love. Scola contacted MTV and Barnes to inform them of her trademark rights. Eight months later, she sent formal cease-and-desist letters to Barnes, Paramount, and World of Wonder Productions, the show’s producer. But that didn’t stop Barnes from using the name. Or the major network and WOW from broadcasting, streaming, and promoting Barnes as Lexi Love. Scola says her online presence has been diluted and she has lost business as a result of the confusion.
Paramount and WO moved to have Scola’s claims dismissed, arguing First Amendment protections covered their use of the name. They were relying on a defense built on a 1989 legal precedent set by Rogers v. Grimaldi, which holds that trademark law gives way to free expression when a mark appears in an expressive work as an artistic element rather than a source identifier.
US District Judge Richard Seeborg rejected that argument on July 16. The key distinction he argued is that Paramount and WOW aren’t using “Lexi Love” as a background color in a fictional story. They were using it to identify a real performer and promote her commercially across national television, paid streaming platforms, and social media. “In essence, they are saying, ‘tune in to see Lexi Love!’” the judge wrote. That’s a source identifying use, not a protected expressive one, so trademark law applies.
An earlier request by Scola for a preliminary injunction (which would have blocked Barnes from continuing to use the name while the case proceeded) was denied. The court found the record still unclear on who expanded the name into which markets first, and the question will be central to the final outcome. Common law trademarks, which exist independent of federal registration, are built through actual commercial use in specific markets. Barnes has used the name in the drag performance market since 2009, while Scola built her rights in the adult film market and beyond. Untangling which rights take precedence in which context will take time and judicial process.
But the recent ruling is significant, because a judge said an adult performer’s two-decade career is exactly the kind of commercial use that creates enforceable intellectual property rights. And that’s the practical takeaway for creators: your stage name is intellectual property. A career built under that name generates trademark rights, even without registration. But registration transforms the rights from something you have to argue for to something that comes with legal presumption of ownership.
It’s worth it for anyone whose name is the foundation of their business to consider filing a federal trademark before they run into something like this. The cost, running around $250 to $350 for the class plus legal fees, is much cheaper than a federal lawsuit.