Atlanta NHL Trademark Thoughts

It’s been two whole days since The Gathering at South Forsyth was greenlit by Forsyth County, Georgia, and we’re already seeing trademark applications related to a possible NHL team there.

A proposed massive mixed-use development in the Atlanta suburbs, The Gathering is to be anchored by an NHL-ready arena. The project is spearheaded by developer Vernon Krause, who has been vocal in his desire to bring in an NHL expansion team.

Importantly, the NHL has not formally begun an expansion process. Krause does not have a team and the arena is simply a concept at this point.

That said, we’ve already seen what appears to be our first trademark-squatting attempt relating to the potential new team, as two people who seem to have no connection with Krause Sports and Entertainment applied for a trademark for “Atlanta Firebirds” for the purpose of “Entertainment in the nature of professional hockey games.”

We’re just over a month from the end of the NHL’s most-recent branding story, as Utah Hockey Club shed its temporary inaugural name and announced that they would become the Utah Mammoth. As that process wrapped up, I noted how unique it was to have seen speculation surrounding it play out in the trademark space rather than the domain registration space, as we saw with previous NHL expansion efforts. At the very beginning of the Utah branding saga, I thought that might be the case, as domain registration looks a lot different now than it did even as recently as the league’s Seattle expansion.

I do wonder if, just as Utah learned from Seattle and Seattle learned from Vegas, we might see some new methods in protecting potential branding that Krause learned from Utah.

Two things immediately jump to mind for me.

One is that Utah was eventually bit by the fact that their preferred name – Utah Yetis – ended up being blocked by Yeti Coolers.

I mentioned several times that I was surprised that a deal couldn’t be worked out there. It seems like Smith Entertainment Group was also surprised. Considering how long Ryan Smith spent pursuing an NHL team, in retrospect it seems like maybe he should have been getting his ducks in a row sooner regarding branding.

If Krause learns that lesson, it’s possible that we’ll see trademark applications come in before a franchise has been granted.

Secondly, the extraordinary attempts that the Utah organization took to remain technically anonymous actually drew attention to themselves. While the applications were not made by Smith Entertainment Group, the fact that they came through a global law firm from a newly-formed entity that was paying to have another company serve as their registered agent showed that – whoever they were – the people behind the trademark applications had a ton of money invested in the process. As trademark squatters usually act on the cheap, it was easy to assume that this anonymous company was probably backed by Smith.

It would be interesting if Krause, learning from that, applied for trademarks through intermediaries that looked like squatters.

Maybe he has learned both of those lessons and the Atlanta Firebirds trademark application is real. I don’t think that’s the case but that’s what I’m trying to say; that the lesson to learn would be to make it look like something worth ignoring.

We’ll see what happens if the NHL decides it’s time to add a team or two.