By Drew Schott
In April 2024, the National Hockey League (NHL) approved the sale of the Arizona Coyotes to Ryan and Ashley Smith of Smith Entertainment Group and the franchise’s relocation to Salt Lake City, Utah. Some of the initial team name options for the franchise were rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on likelihood of confusion grounds. After failing to reach a trademark coexistence agreement with outdoor goods company Yeti, the franchise played as Utah Hockey Club for the 2024-25 NHL season.
Following the campaign, Mammoth was announced as the franchise’s name on May 7, 2025 and it began selling merchandise with the name. Mammoth Hockey – an Oregon-based hockey equipment bag manufacturer – originally showed support for the franchise’s new name, but eventually made multiple threats of litigation to the franchise such as a cease-and-desist letter. The Mammoth filed a lawsuit against Mammoth Hockey in United States District Court in Utah on August 1, 2025 seeking to end the trademark dispute, but Mammoth Hockey responded with a motion for a preliminary injunction nearly two months later seeking to “protect its long-established brand against use by the NHL’s new Utah franchise, which adopted the name ‘Utah Mammoth’ on May 7, 2025.” The preliminary injunction to stop any use of Utah Mammoth marketing was denied on December 23, 2025.
“This preliminary injunction is denied, but we have to recognize at trial, Mammoth Hockey could have better evidence and they haven’t indicated that they’re going to abandon this challenge,” said Anita Moorman, a Professor of Sport Administration at the University of Louisville. “All that happened is they didn’t get their injunction, so that doesn’t mean they’re going to lose at trial. It just meant they weren’t able to prove a likelihood of success on the merits at trial, but the court recognized that their survey evidence was pretty weak on both sides. Also, regarding the strength of the mark, there’s going to be a better opportunity to try to prove that that mark is stronger.
“Their sales data was not very strong. They know what they needed to make a stronger argument and they now can go and try to fix that for trial, potentially. I really think that these courts’ findings of distinctiveness related to the word mammoth can cut both ways because both parties tried to argue that their marks were arbitrary marks… The court said no, they’re suggestive.”
The legal matter between the Utah Mammoth and Mammoth Hockey was a focus of the lecture, “‘Mammoth’ Trademarks: Emerging trademark issues in rebranding and relocating sports teams,” at the Sport and Recreation Law Association Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. In addition to Moorman, the lecture featured Mark Dodds – a Professor of Sport Management at the State University of New York at Cortland – and John Grady, a Professor of Sport and Entertainment Management at the University of South Carolina.
“Mammoth Hockey, the hockey bag company, is technically the senior trademark owner, so that is part of the problem,” Grady said. “… (T)he team plans to continue selling merchandise using the Utah Mammoth’s name as a result of the preliminary injunction being denied.”
According to Moorman, rebranding a professional sports team is a “huge undertaking” with financial, legal, media and merchandising implications. For example, the rebrands of the Cleveland Guardians of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League’s Washington Commanders cost between $10 million and $20 million.
To avoid litigation, franchises have pursued trademark coexistence agreements. The NHL’s Seattle Kraken entered into a trademark coexistence agreement with Kraken Rum, as well as made the company the official rum of the franchise. Meanwhile, the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights had a trademark coexistence agreement with Clarkson University – whose teams are named the Golden Knights – in upstate New York prior to announcing its name.
Additionally, universities have sought to protect the marks of their athletic programs, as Miami University in Ohio successfully requested that Bozeman High School in Montana change its logo due to it previously looking similar to the university’s copyrighted logo. Additionally, the University of Wisconsin has sent cease-and-desist letters to high schools in the state that seek to use its Motion “W” logo.
“(This was done) to really begin to protect the trademark and identify it solely to their organization, not to different means and teams,” Dodds said.
Dodds also discussed how trademarks serve as an “initial visual aspect of creating” the power of a sports team’s brand. Due to the vast amount of already named sports franchises, he shared that organizations are forced to find new types of logos and trademarks. Historically, numerous teams have created logos and trademarks for franchise names that connect to their home city or state.
For example, the name of the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) references the Declaration of Independence being signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1776. Other franchises have sought to use their logos and trademarks to convey information to their home market, such as the name of MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers alluding to the Wisconsin city’s history of beer brewing. Meanwhile, there are franchises whose logos, names and trademarks – such as the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA who moved to California from Minnesota ahead of the 1960-61 season – have little historical connection to their market.
“When teams are developing their different logos and trademarks and building their brands, they really want to make a connection to a common area, something that they can build upon and somewhere that they can actually own, if possible,” Dodds said.
“When Cleveland went through with the Guardians, they looked at almost 1,200 different names,” he added. “They surveyed 40,000 fans, were estimated to spend 140 hours interviewing people and spent 100 hours brainstorming all of their findings to come up with the Guardians. That’s a huge investment.”
Events, “Mammoth” Trademarks: Emerging trademark issues in rebranding and relocating sports teams, (February 25, 2026), https://www.srlaconference.org/program-schedule/.
Drew Schott is a J.D. Candidate at Tulane University Law School. He was a Staff Writer for The Sports Lawyer Monthly during the 2025-26 academic year.
