The Utah Hockey Club is searching for a new name, but it’s skated into a marketplace crowded with trademarks.
Yeti was already taken by a popular cooler manufacturer. Blizzard belonged to a video game company. Venom had been claimed by a company that makes snowboarding gear.
When the tech billionaire Ryan Smith bought the struggling Arizona Coyotes of the N.H.L. in late April and then relocated the team to Salt Lake City, the move seemed to come at the speed of a Bobby Hull slap shot.
But finding a long-term name for the franchise is another story.
For now, it is going by a generic placeholder name, the Utah Hockey Club. As the team underwent its rapid move in the spring (normally, sports franchise relocations unfold over years, not months), its new ownership began to submit a flurry of trademark applications for possible names.
It ran straight into a bureaucratic goalie ready to block every shot it took: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the guardian of an increasingly crowded marketplace of brand names.
Initial options included the Blizzard, Outlaws, Mammoth, Venom and Yeti, and the current name, the Utah Hockey Club. When the franchise heard back from the trademark office, each application received a preliminary rejection.
Other brands had already grabbed the trademarks for several of the names. In a nonbinding refusal, dated Jan. 9, of the hockey club’s application for the Yeti trademark, the office cited a “likelihood of confusion,” apparently concerned that fans could not tell the difference between a water bottle and an abominable snowman. The same explanation was given for Blizzard and Venom.
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