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Battle beginning over Angels’ rally monkey

By Gary Gentile The Associated Press
Wednesday November 06, 2002

ANAHEIM — The World Series champion Anaheim Angels aren’t about to let anyone monkey around with their mascot, especially when it comes to a movie. 

Larry Cano, an executive producer of the 1983 film “Silkwood,” views the Rally Monkey as a perfect role model for kids and wants to make a movie featuring the crowd-pleasing primate. 

Cano has filed both a trademark application for the term “Rally Monkey” and a script treatment with the Writer’s Guild of America. 

There’s only one problem. The Angels and major league baseball say they have prior rights to the name, and have already begun to enforce them against others looking to make a buck from the monkey. 

“The mere fact that somebody filed for trademark registration does not give them any special legal status,” said Rick Schlesinger, an attorney for the Angels. “Our position is that ’Rally Monkey’ is a protected trademark of the Angels and has been so since we first used it in the fall of 2000.” 

Not to mention the fact that The Walt Disney Co., which owns the Angels, might want to make its own Rally Monkey movie someday. 

The monkey with seemingly miraculous powers first made his appearance on June 6, 2000, when the Angels, losing to the San Francisco Giants, needed a boost. The operator of the video scoreboard in right-center field played a clip from the movie “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” that showed a capuchin monkey jumping up and down. 

Fans went wild, the team won and a tradition was born. 

Until this year, the monkey restricted his appearances to inside the stadium. But as the Angels moved closer and closer to the baseball playoffs, the monkey made his way to T-shirts and other items.