An NHL team quickly moved to Utah. To rename it takes longer.

Yeti was already taken by a popular cooler manufacturer. Blizzard belonged to to a video game company. Venom had been asserted of a company that manufactures snowboarding equipment.

When the technical billionaire Ryan Smith bought the fighting Arizona -Coyoter in the NHL at the end of April and then the team moved to Salt Lake City, the move seemed to come with the speed of a Bobby Hull Slack shot.

But finding a long -term name of the franchise is another story.

For the time being, a generic upright name, Utah Hockey Club. As the team underwent its rapid step in the spring (usually sports franchise relocations for years, not months), began its new ownership to submit a flurry of trademark applications to possible names.

It ran right into a bureaucratic goalkeeper ready to block every shot it took: the US patent and trademark office, guardian of an increasingly crowded marketplace for brand names.

The original settings included Blizzard, Outlaws, Mammoth, Venom and Yeti and the current name, Utah Hockey Club. When the franchise heard from the trademark office, each application received a preliminary rejection.

Other brands had already seized the trademarks for several of the names. In a non -binding rejection, dated January 9, by Hockey Club’s application for the Yeti brand, the office quoted a “probability of confusion“Apparently concerned that fans couldn’t tell the difference between a water bottle and a abhorrent snowman. The same explanation was given for Blizzard and Venom.

So on Wednesday, the leaders of Utah Hockey Club said they were going back to the drawing board. The three options now on the table: Utah Hockey Club, Mammoth and the Outlaws.

Franchisens First submission To trademark the Mammoth name used by Colorado Mammoth from the National Lacrosse League, did not immediately fail due to a competing fire; The Trademark Office cited administrative problems with its use.

But an effort to reach an agreement with Yeti Cooler Company on a shared trademark failed, so the team excluded Yeti as a mascot, said Mike Maughan, a director of Smith’s company, Smith Entertainment Group. The team would not have been able to use a Yeti picture on clothing or other licensed gear, he said.

“We engaged deeply with Yeti Cooler Company and worked with them over a process to see if there was a certain coexistence agreement that we could engage in them,” Maughan said at a news conference on Wednesday. The cooler company, he added, has “a unique and strong trademark.”

Yeti Cooler Company did not respond to a request for comment.

Fans who participated in the team’s match against Pittsburgh Penguins Wednesday night were invited to vote on the long -term name of the franchise. Voting continues from home on Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, Said the team.

If fans choose to stick to Utah Hockey Club, it may present another problem because generic sentences cannot be the trademark.

The team does not need to trademark its name. But the lack of one could make it difficult for the franchise to prevent people from selling knockoff -gear, said Jonas Anderson, who teaches patent at the University of Utah.

“If they adopt Utah Hockey Club without a trademark, they could sell Utah Hockey Club Gear,” he said. “But so could I.”

Maughan, the team’s director, said that any name would constitute “trademark problems to be treated.” But he remained optimistic.

“We have an incredible team and we are very sure we have a clear way to each of these names,” he said. The team plans to reveal one last name before the 2025-26 season.

Utah Hockey Club is not the first sports team wading through a slow renaming process. When the NFL team in Washington, DC, withdrew its previous name in 2020 and found a new train 18 months, a process slowed down by trademark challenges.

Meanwhile, the team was called Washington football teams. Now they are the Washington commanders.

As a trademark register becomes more crowded, sports franchises are struggling to secure useful names, says trademark -law experts.

“There has been an explosion of trademark protection,” said Jeanne Fromer, a lawyer professor at New York University who has completed empirical studies on trademark. “Virtually all dictionary words are taken. All common surnames are taken. “

And sports teams are limited by their desire to resonate with local preferences and convey qualities such as hardness, said Ashley R. Dobbs, a professor of trademark law at the University of Richmond.

“We are running out of words,” she said, adding that any franchise who chooses a mascot in the future would have to “do their branding homework.”

Teams can still face trademark problems even after settling on a name. By 2023, Seattle Kraken, another NHL franchise, was sued by the federal court of a man who said the team’s gear violated trademark rights he had acquired for Seattle Metropolitans, a pro -team that last played in 1924. sustained.

And Cleveland Guardians, an MLB team that changed its name in 2021, was also sued by a Cleveland Roller Derby Club, who shared the Guardians name. The baseball team and Roller Derby Club reached a solution.

Utah Hockey Club is linked to another team in the state with a curious name.

In 2020, Smith Bought Salt Lake City’s NBA Team, Utah Jazz.

When jazz moved in 1979 from New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, some expected the team to choose a new name that fits its mountain wind. But a competition to choose a produced no winners, Sam Battistone, the team owner at the time, Remembered later.

And then the name is called, like Utah Hockey Club maybe.