Salt Lake City, UT Gets Sued by Steamboat Springs, CO Over “Ski Town, USA”

Last week, Steamboat Spring ski resort filed a legal complaint against Visit Salt Lake and 4 Salt Lake area ski resorts.  The complaint was filed with the Federal District Court for the District of Colorado.  Steamboat claims they need to protect its “Ski Town, U.S.A.” trademark.

Steamboat also owns the trademark of “Champagne Powder.”  We’ve actually received cease and desist orders from Steamboat after using the words “Champagne Powder’ in the title of an article.

This legal action was in direct response to the Visit Salt Lake’s recent branding of Salt Lake City as “Ski City, USA”.  Visit Salt Lake just began using this slogan in September.

The Utah ski resorts involved are Alta, Brighton, Solitude, Snowbird.  All of these ski resorts are within an hours drive of Salt Lake City.  These four resorts were mentioned in the complaint.

Steamboat has had the term “Ski Town, U.S.A.” trademarked since 1963 and has been using the term since 1959.

“We’re pretty vigilant about informing people when we think they’ve infringed on our trademark.  We’ve sent cease-and-desist letters in the past, but this is the first time we’ve filed a complaint.” – Rob Perlman, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Steamboat Ski & Resort Corporation

The ski industry has been filled with ligation of late with Park City Mountain Resort’s owners suing Talisker (owners of Park City ski resort), Talisker suing Park City Mountain Resort’s owners, Red Bull settling for $13 million in a class action lawsuit and now Steamboat Springs suing Salt Lake City.  Wow.