parkcitysucks.com<\/a>, with our current analysis. The shortened version is… Vail probably has better lawyers, but this fight is in the court of public opinion. Given the arguments Vail has been making, they are going to lose…at least in the court of public opinion. Their argument seems to boil down to something like “we’ll allow any use of the Park City name as long as it isn’t used in conjunction with a ski resort.” The problem is that you can’t ALLOW\u00a0what isn’t fundamentally yours to dictate. The name Park City is fundamentally all of ours, and not a corporation’s. Vail shouldn’t\u00a0get to choose.<\/p>\nThat said, Vail should not be misconstrued as a bad actor. They purchased the Park City trademark application from POWDR Corp (if you hate Vail for this trademark\u00a0issue, you should doubly hate POWDR Corp and their owners, the Cumming family,\u00a0for \u00a0starting it). Vail\u00a0bought an asset from POWDR and that asset is worthless unless they defend it. If any of us were in their shoes we may very well make the same decisions they have made.<\/p>\n
So, Vail is in a pickle. What do they do?<\/p>\n
However, Park City is too. Don’t forget that Vail makes many sizable donations that benefit most of us in Park City.<\/p>\n
The fact is that we are all in this together. Vail would have you believe that the world knows PCMR and (The) Canyons as “Park City” and if they ever refer to it as anything other than that and the MTN stock will crash to $99.9 per share. Residents of Park City say, “we’ve always referred to the resort serviced by the town lift as PCMR”… but in reality just a few years back it was commonly called just Park City.<\/p>\n
So, it’s a mess. But, what’s the right thing to do? What meets everyone’s needs?<\/p>\n
It’s pretty obvious that the term Park City Mountain Resort is the right term for Vail to use.<\/p>\n
If you live in Boca Raton, and you hear Park City Mountain Resort, where\/what do you think that is? \u00a0Yep, a ski resort in Park City.<\/p>\n
If you live in Park City and hear the term, Park City Mountain Resort, what do you think it is? A ski resort in Park City.<\/p>\n
In neither example does anyone mistake the town for the resort.<\/p>\n
Park City Mountain Resort is the right term.
\nPark City Mountain Resort is the right term.
\nPark City Mountain Resort is the right term.
\nPark City Mountain Resort is the right term.
\nPark City Mountain Resort is the right term.<\/p>\n
Anything more than that, pushed by Vail, will meet opposition. If so, Vail should expect a boycott of their Epic\u00a0Pass from\u00a0locals. Park City residents generally have the time, means, and demeanor to protest what they don’t like. It appears that the term “Park City” is one of those things.<\/p>\n
So, how can Vail get out of this mess? As we’ve said before, they need to find a way to endow the name Park City to the town while protecting their use of the name Park City in relation to their resort. They need an arrangement that will ensure that everyone can use the name Park City. If a local wants to start a business called Park City cross country skiing, they should be able to do that. If a local wants to open Park City Ski Shop they should be able to.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Vail turns the trademark over to Park City and Park City grants a set of rights back to Vail for the use of the term Park City. That would be the right thing to do.<\/p>\n
Yet, it becomes even more of a mess when you factor in the officially granted Utah business names using the words Park City in conjunction with winter sports.<\/p>\n
\n- PARK CITY NORDIC BETTIES SKI EDUCATION LLC<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY POWDER CATS & HELI-SKI, LLC<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY SKI & SUN<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY SKI BOOT LLC<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY SKI CHALETS LLC<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY SKI EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY SKI HOLIDAYS<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY SKI PLACES, LLC<\/li>\n
- PARK CITY SKI SCHOOL REUNION<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And that’s like 10% of the listings. It’s unlikely Vail could continue to enforce this trademark, based on the public backlash of impacting so many companies. Of course most of those names in the list above likely are grandfathered, and can’t be touched by Vail. However, if it’s any indication of the frequency of using the words Park City along with ski, there are many people who want to do that.<\/p>\n
Truly Vail is in an uphill battle.<\/p>\n
We hope Vail\u00a0comes to their senses soon and use their +5 magic to get them out. They are smart. We believe they just need to realize that the current path will not work and hope they decide to move in another direction.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, it’s about to get really ugly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s pretty simple. Vail needs to give up the Park City trademark fight. It’s not because of the public pressure on Vail, with over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}