Utah Hockey Club Faces Roadblock for New Name

The Utah Hockey Club looks to have a permanent name in place by next season.

Jon Alfano | Jan 21, 2025

Jan 18, 2025; Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; Utah Hockey Club center Kevin Stenlund (82), defenseman Ian Cole (28), center Alexander Kerfoot (15), and defenseman John Marino (6) discuss a play before a face-off against the St. Louis Blues during third period at the Delta Center. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Creveling-Imagn Images / Christopher Creveling-Imagn Images

The Utah Hockey Club entered the league under very unusual circumstances, with the franchise only coming into existence less than six months before its inaugural season. As a result, the team opted to use temporary branding for said inaugural season while developing a permanent identity for the 2025-26 season.

For months now, "Yeti" or "Yetis" has been the presumptive favorite for the permanent name. However, there may be a big obstacle in the way of that.

According to Salt Lake City-based TV station KSL, the team's trademark for "Utah Yeti" was refused by the United States Patent and Trademark Office due to "likelihood of confusion" with YETI, the popular outdoor recreation brand.

"Trademark Act Section 2(d) bars registration of an applied-for mark that is 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," a non-final action issued on Jan. 9 said.

The team's trademark application was for use in connection with "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." Unfortunately for the team, YETI already has several trademarks for nearly all of those items.

Even adding "Utah" in front wasn't found to be differentiating enough.

"In the present case, the wording 'Utah' in the applied-for mark is merely descriptive of or generic for applicant's goods," the action said. "Thus, this wording is less significant in terms of affecting the mark's commercial impression, and renders the wording 'YETIS' the more dominant element of the mark."

Going a step further, pluralizing the name to "Yetis" was also found to be too similar.

"An applied-for mark that is the singular or plural form of a registered mark is essentially identical in sound, appearance, meaning, and commercial impression, and thus the marks are confusingly similar," the action said.

The team has three months to respond with further arguments to support its case for a trademark, so there is still hope that "Yeti" or "Yetis" could be the final name. Considering how players and management have talked about those names publicly, then it's almost a guaranteee that the team will make another attempt to secure the trademark.

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Published Jan 21, 2025

JON ALFANO

Jon is a lead writer for Baltimore Ravens On SI and contributes to other sites around the network as well. The Tampa native previously worked with sites such as ClutchPoints and GiveMeSport and earned his journalism degree at the University of Central Florida.