Give Us the Utah Yeti, You Patent Cowards

Utah Hockey Club scraps permanent Yeti nickname due to copyright dispute with cooler company

The team will now be known as either the Hockey Club, Mammoth or Wasatch.

Yahoo SportsJack Baer

This is a travesty:

The Utah Hockey Club is moving on from a nickname many believed would eventually become its permanent moniker, the Utah Yeti. The primary reason why: a cooler brand.

Mike Maughan, an executive of the team's parent company Smith Entertainment Group, confirmed to reporters Wednesday, per ESPN, that the team would pivot to a different selection of possible names after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the Yeti name and logo it submitted for approval.

I have absolutely no dog in this fight as I'm not from Utah, nor does the city I am from, Cleveland, even have an NHL team.¹ But I do like sports and I'm into sports brands. And it strikes me that 'Utah Yeti' would have been a great one. It just has so much going for it: nice four-letter symmetry, almost-alliteration despite two different first letters, the potential for a killer mascot.² It's the best since Seattle Kraken and it would have been better than that as it just rolls right off your tongue. Utah Yeti.

And the patent office rejected it because of a water cooler brand. Specifically because they sell apparel, it seems:

The USPTO specifically cited a "likelihood of confusion" for consumers due to other companies and brands with a similar name, most notably the Yeti Cooler Company. Different companies can feature a similar name if they're in clearly different fields (e.g. the Beatles' Apple Corps and Apple Computers), but it seems likely an NHL team with the same name would clash with certain products, such as the cooler company's apparel line.

That's silly. Nearly all brands have some sort of "schwag" these days. And while yes, outdoorsy brands, like Yeti, tend to do more such sales for obvious reasons, that's clearly not the primary business – nor would it be the primary business of the Utah Yeti – and so they shouldn't be able to block a mark because of that. Just as yes, Apple Corps was never able to block Apple from using that name, despite numerous attempts. And even after Apple entered the music space – after promising not to in previous settlements – with the iPod and iTunes, a major entry point into the general world, you might say, Apple Corps still lost the case.³ The Utah Yetis should be blocked from selling water coolers. That's it.

They tried to make the case, per ESPN:

"We engaged deeply with Yeti Cooler Company and worked with them over a process to see if there was some coexistence agreement that we could engage with them on," said Maughan. "They have a unique and strong trademark on anything published Yeti or Yetis. We did not have a coexistence agreement with Yeti and therefore have decided to move on from that name."

And so instead we're down to the following choices:

• Utah Hockey Club, the incumbent
• Utah Mammoth, one of the other six finalists presented last year
• Utah Wasatch, named for the Wasatch mountain range in Utah (not unlike MLB's Colorado Rockies)

The first one is fine, but bland (and also actually rejected by the patent office, though they think there are ways to rectify that one). The second is pretty good, it was in my own top 3 last year, but the logo they put out there was way too White Walker-y. The third one is... WTF. Back to Yahoo:

The latter option is described as "a new option created to honor the idea of a mythical snow creature with a Utah-centric approach inspired by the Wasatch Mountain range." In practice, it appears to be a go-around for the Yeti nickname, using a Yeti mascot without the name.

There's precedent with the Colorado Rockies, of course. But everyone knows what the Rocky Mountains are. It's one of the key things – if not the key thing – that Colorado is known for. I doubt if anyone outside of Utah knows the Wasatch range. It's literally hard to say. It's the opposite of rolling off your tongue. I suspect the plural form is still "Wasatch" but if it's Wastaches, that's even worse. It's sounds like Wario's moustache. ChatGPT tells me it's derived from a Ute Native American word meaning "low place in high mountains" but even that isn't great – naming a sports team after a "low place"? Why not call them the Utah Last Placers?

I do appreciate that the name is so ridiculous that it might just lead to everyone calling them the Yeti anyway, especially if that's still their logo (which they'd seemingly be allowed to do). So maybe that's the plan. But it's a weird one.

If it really can't be 'Yeti', I guess you go with 'Mammoth'. But I also liked 'Outlaws' as one of the options put out there last year. Presumably that was seen as too violent or negative, but come on, this is the era of masculine culture, according to Mark Zuckerberg.

This all has the making of the worst branding mishap since New Orleans agreed to send the Hornet name back to Charlotte and when picking a new name went with the Pelicans instead of the Brass. The New Orleans Brass would have been such a killer name. Yes, close to the um, Utah Jazz, but that's because the team moved there from New Orleans!

My god I just wrote a thousand words about this.

¹ Cleveland did have an NFL team for a couple of years in the 1970s, the Barons. That was after the California Golden Seals relocated there -- imagine that, a California team relocated to Cleveland, Ohio. But they quickly went away after merging with the Minnesota North Stars (now the Dallas Stars).

² But also quite a bit of risk that they make such a mascot far too cute. It would need to be a scary ass Yeti.

³ This eventually led to the final settlement, which saw Apple Inc. take over all 'Apple' trademarks, and license the name back to Apple Corps. It may have cost Apple $500M or so, but also eventually paved the way for The Beatles music -- a favorite of Steve Jobs -- on iTunes. Finally.