The Utah Hockey Club can’t get the puck into the net regarding its efforts to pick a permanent team name. The team intends to have its name in place by the 2025-26 NHL season, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused a request to trademark “Utah Yetis,” ESPN reported.
“Yeti” or “Yetis” was the preferred choice among the six finalists selected in a fan vote. The other choices are Blizzard, Mammoth, Outlaws and Venom. Remaining the Utah Hockey Club (or Utah HC) is also a possibility.
However, copyrights on all six of those names have been refused by the USPTO, according to The Athletic. Those rulings are non-final, giving Utah an opportunity to make a case for the names. The team has three months from the dates of the refusals to attempt to move the trademark process forward.
Mammoth was refused in November, while the other five were stopped in January.
Fans of YETI — the company that makes drinkware, coolers and bags — might not be surprised that Utah is encountering some difficulty in getting a trademark for “Yeti.” The USPTO refused “Utah Yetis” because of a “likelihood of confusion,” reported KSL.com’s Ryan Miller.
Even with “Utah” as part of the name, using “Yeti” would be “so similar to a registered mark that it is likely consumers would be confused, mistaken, or deceived as to the commercial source of the goods and/or services of the parties,” said the USPTO ruling, issued Jan. 9.
Though “Yeti” would be the name of a NHL franchise, the team would also sell “clothing, namely, shirts, T-shirts, jerseys, sweatshirts, sweatpants, caps, hats, scarves, infant and toddler one-piece clothing, pajamas, bandanas, underwear, gloves, socks, shorts, suspenders, swim trunks, coats, jackets, robes, pants, leggings, sweaters, ear muffs, cloth bibs, belts, warm-up suits, headbands and wristbands,” according to the trademark application.
But YETI, or Yeti Coolers LLC, already holds several trademarks in standard and stylized fonts for nearly all of those same items.
That’s not an automatic deal-breaker. Utah just has to provide more evidence to argue a claim for the new trademark. Maybe the team can consult the Detroit Red Wings, who exist in the same world as Red Wing Shoe Company.
The six prospective names were selected by fan vote from an initial list of 20 before Utah Hockey Club began its first season in Salt Lake City after relocating from Arizona last April. So far this season, Utah has a 21–19–7 record, placing them 11th in the Western Conference.
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