Smith Entertainment Group (SEG), the owners of the National Hockey League’s Utah Mammoth hockey club, has filed a federal lawsuit against a hockey equipment company in its effort to settle a trademark dispute between the two entities.
The franchise, formerly known as the Coyotes, moved from Arizona to Utah before the 2024-25 NHL season and spent its first season in Salt Lake City known as the Utah Hockey Club, as owners and fans worked to decide on a permanent name. In May, the team said that it would be known as the Utah Mammoth, with a depiction of a woolly mammoth’s head in front of a mountain as its logo.
The Oregon-based equipment company, Mammoth Hockey LLC, sent a cease-and-desist letter arguing that the Utah team name could lead to consumer confusion in the market. Mammoth Hockey sells oversized hockey gear bags, though its logo and colors bear little resemblance to those of the Utah club.
But Mammoth Hockey’s concern over the Utah team name seems to be of recent origin when it threatened to pursue a trademark dispute in “some unknown forum, at some unknown time.” According to an article on Yahoo Sports, the bag company was in communication with the hockey club early in the naming process and apparently agreed to amicably coexist — even publicly endorsing the Mammoth rebrand in a 2024 Facebook post and a 2025 series of LinkedIn messages and emails.
The franchise has now seemingly beaten the Oregon company to the punch, asking the U.S. District Court in Utah to settle the matter.
A statement from SEG reads, “Utah Mammoth and the NHL believe strongly that we have the right to use the name Utah Mammoth under federal and state law, and that our use will not harm the defendant or its business in any way.
“We have taken this action only after careful consideration based on the defendant’s position. We are not able to comment further on ongoing legal matters.”
The lawsuit also notes that Mammoth Hockey declined to officially register a trademark at any point since getting off the ground more than a decade ago, and a search of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) records by Chase Beardsley, for his article on hockywriters.com, seem to confirm that is the case. All five results for “Mammoth” in a USPTO records search related to hockey endeavors are pending filings linked to the NHL franchise in Utah.
But Mammoth Hockey doesn’t seem willing to give up easily.
In a statement to media inquiries, Mammoth Hockey co-founder Erik Olson said, “Mammoth Hockey intends to vigorously defend the litigation recently commenced against it by Utah Mammoth of the National Hockey League and protect its long-standing trademark used in connection with the hockey goods it has manufactured and sold for the past 10 years.”
This isn’t the first time Utah’s new hockey team has found itself in a trademark dispute. Earlier this year the club abandoned its preferred “Yeti” nickname when the USPTO rejected a trademark application due to a “likelihood of confusion” with pre-existing trademarks. The company that manufactures Yeti coolers then refused to back down so the team could use the name, citing its marketing of products, such as its apparel line, that could be damaged by an NHL team’s product sales.