Luke Littler is 19 years old and has already won two consecutive World Championship titles in darts. He’s also just become the latest celebrity to do something that would’ve sounded absolutely wild a few years ago: trademark his own face.
The application to the Intellectual Property Office might seem like a paranoid move from someone at the peak of their career, but it actually reflects a growing anxiety about who owns what in the age of artificial intelligence. Littler’s move puts him in the same camp as Matthew McConaughey, Cole Palmer, and countless others trying to lock down their likenesses before someone else profits from them.
The Face as Brand Property
Here’s the thing about being famous in 2026. Your image isn’t just your image anymore. It’s intellectual property. It’s a commodity that can be copied, remixed, deepfaked, and sold without your permission. KP Nuts already has the legal rights to use Littler’s face on merchandise, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Trademarking protects against the opportunistic stuff. Someone decides to create a darts video game and slaps Littler’s likeness on it without asking? That’s where a trademark becomes useful. It’s a legal signal that says: this face, this brand, belongs to someone.
Louise Popple from Taylor Wessing law firm explained to the BBC that the UK’s “lack of any image rights law” is precisely why celebrities are going down this route. They’re using trademark law as a workaround to fill a gap that legislation hasn’t caught up with yet.
AI Deepfakes Changed Everything
This isn’t just about merchandise anymore. The real driver here is generative AI.
Scarlett Johansson and Taylor Swift have both been caught in the crossfire of AI-generated videos and fake audio that circulate online. Johansson’s case was particularly jarring because someone used her voice for an OpenAI demo without permission. These aren’t hypothetical concerns anymore. They’re happening right now.
The technology to create convincing deepfakes is becoming more accessible by the day. Anyone with a laptop and the right software can now generate videos of celebrities saying things they never said or doing things they never did. For someone like Littler, who built his entire brand on being the charismatic “Nuke” dominating the darts world, that’s genuinely terrifying.
Not a Silver Bullet, But It Sends a Message
Here’s where it gets interesting though. Joe Doyle-Ward, a trade mark attorney at Abion, was honest about what a trademark can and can’t actually do. It won’t stop “everyday use.” It won’t prevent someone from watching a video of Littler throwing darts or posting a photo to social media.
What it does is stop commercial exploitation. It says that if you want to use this face to make money, you need permission. It’s not foolproof. Popple admits it’s “unlikely” Littler could stop anything other than a nearly identical copy of his face, even with the registration.
But here’s the psychological angle: it puts off “opportunistic merchandising.” Someone thinking about slapping Littler’s likeness on cheap knockoff products might think twice if there’s a registered trademark on file. It signals intent. It says I’m serious about this.
For licensing deals, a trademark gives Littler “something” tangible to license. Instead of having to explain why someone shouldn’t use his image, he can point to legal documentation that he owns it. That’s actually valuable when you’re negotiating with brands.
The Broader Business Picture
Darts has exploded in popularity over the last few years, partly because of younger players like Littler. Sponsorships, merchandise, media rights, licensing deals. There’s real money flowing through professional darts now. For someone who became world champion at 17, protecting that asset makes complete sense.
Cole Palmer trademarked not just his image and autograph but literally the phrase “Cold Palmer.” That might seem excessive, but when you’re building a personal brand worth millions, you want the full picture protected. Littler’s already trademarked “the Nuke” in the United States. This face trademark is the next logical step.
The Legal Framework Still Catching Up
Here’s what’s frustrating about all this. Littler, McConaughey, and everyone else doing this are basically improvising legal protection because the actual laws haven’t caught up to the technology.
There’s no comprehensive image rights law in the UK. There’s no clear legal framework for how AI deepfakes should be handled. So instead, celebrities are using trademark law, copyright law, right of publicity laws from other countries, and any other legal tool available to them as defensive measures.
Joe Doyle-Ward admits that “the legal framework around AI and copyright is still evolving.” Trademark remains “one of the most effective tools to control commercial use in the meantime.” In the meantime. That phrase says everything. We’re in a holding pattern, waiting for governments to catch up to what’s already happened.
What Does This Mean for Everyone Else?
The reality is that if trademarking your face is becoming standard practice for celebrities, it raises a question about what the rest of us should be doing. Should micro-influencers be trademarking their likenesses? Should anyone with a recognizable personal brand?
Probably not yet. It’s expensive and most people don’t have assets worth protecting at that level. But the trend suggests that in the next five to ten years, personal brand protection might become as routine as getting a domain name or setting up a business account.
For now, it’s mostly the ultra-famous doing it. Littler’s move is smart branding. It’s practical. It’s a statement that even young athletes are aware that their image is valuable intellectual property that needs protecting.
Whether a trademark will actually hold up in court against an AI company using Littler’s likeness to train a model remains to be seen. The whole thing might be preemptive. It might turn out to be essential. We won’t know until someone actually tests it.
