With the Utah Mammoth ready to make its NHL debut in mere days, the league and franchise are eager to sell jerseys, shirts and other branded merch boasting the league’s newest team.

They have run into one potential snag: An Oregon-based company called Mammoth Hockey already exists, and the Pacific Northwest business, which sells hockey equipment, is not keen on new Mammoth gear entering the market. With little time to resolve the dispute from the NHL’s perspective, a legal back-and-forth has initiated.

  • On August 1, the NHL franchise Utah Mammoth filed a federal lawsuit against Mammoth Hockey in order to get declaratory judgement that the “Utah Mammoth” name is not in violation of rights asserted by Mammoth Hockey.
  • On September 25, the equipment company countered with a filing that seeks a preliminary injunction. In the injunction, Mammoth Hockey is requesting that the NHL team cease selling Mammoth-branded merch until the courts have reached a conclusion. The NHL season officially beings October 7.
In the injunction Mammoth Hockey is requesting that the NHL team cease selling Mammoth-branded merch until the courts have reached a conclusion. The NHL season officially beings October 7. “

A key point to be noted in this dispute is that the Oregon-based equipment company has never owned the trademark to Mammoth Hockey. In fact, according to the NHL team, the business even voiced support publicly for the league potentially using Mammoth as the name of its expansion team.

Can A Business Have Rights To A Name Without Trademark?

Technically, the Oregon-based equipment company may have a case, but it might be difficult for it to prove the merit of its assertion.

  • Without having registered for a trademark, Mammoth Hockey will be relying on common law, which can be protected at the state and federal level.

The company’s filing argues that it has sold merchandise in 47 states, including Utah, which is enough to establish common law for its assertion to the rights of the name in those states. The business also makes the point that, by the nature of fandom, customers who root for other teams are less likely to buy from Mammoth Hockey because it might be confused for supporting a rival.

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“We’ve poured 11 years of hard work into making gear players can trust,” says Erik Olson, founder of Mammoth Hockey. “We want to continue doing that for many years to come.”

  • This represents a thorny area worth monitoring, though it serves as a reminder that actual trademark violations are even more likely to lead to headaches or worse for branded merch facilitators.


Protecting intellectual property is a major concern for the promo industry, which is fueled by creativity and innovation.

  • Trademarks, copyrights and patents are designed to distinguish one’s products or services from another’s.
  • Those protections enable customers to know what they can expect, ultimately building brand loyalty.


Although the need to protect IP isn’t called into play until someone infringes on it, suppliers, distributors, decorators and business service providers should keep an eye on the market to remain vigilant. For example, suppliers are urged to file a patent application before public disclosure.

“If you wait to file, you may waive your rights or limit the remedies,” said Justin Miller, Esq., a patent attorney with Larson & Larson, at the 2019 PPAI Product Responsibility Summit.

  • In a landmark legal victory for the promo industry in 2018, a federal court jury ruled in favor of ETS Express after the supplier was sued for alleged trademark infringement by Can’t Live Without It, LLC, dba S’well Bottle.


Conversely, you don’t want to infringe upon someone else’s IP when creating or designing products. When accepting an order, distributors should avoid the obvious such as Disney, Star Wars, Marvel characters and the like, as well as famous landmarks, slogans, logos, likenesses of celebrities and photos and art of unknown origin.

RELATED: New Ruling Could Make Design Patents Harder To Obtain

“Fair use laws remain extremely gray, and companies incorporating copyrighted assets into their work should be aware that the case-by-case and context-sensitive evaluation lends itself to much subjective speculation about how a court of law, i.e., a judge or a panel of judges, may apply an objective analysis in determining whether a use of a copyrighted work is fair and thus non-infringing,” wrote Halliburton in a 2023 commentary on the Copyright Act’s ‘fair use’ doctrine.