Did you know that Vail owns the trademark for the term “Park City” in relation to “Providing facilities for skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking, alpine slide, mini-golf and horseback riding, and conducting classes and instruction in skiing and snowboarding and providing rental of skiing and snowboarding equipment; resort services, namely, entertainment in the nature of ski and snowboard races and conducting entertainment exhibitions in the nature of sporting events and musical concerts; resort lodging services.”

So What Does This Mean?

What does this mean? Vail owns the name Park City in conjunction with anything related to skiing, mountain biking, hiking, horseback riding, ski rental, resort services, and lodging. Yep, that’s pretty much everything most people in Park City care about.

Next question, “How did this happen?”

First, let’s get something out of the way. We don’t really think Park City, the city, sucks. We don’t think Park City, the resort, sucks. We don’t even think Vail Sucks. What we think sucks is the choice, by Vail, to use both the name Park City for its resort here and for enforcing its trademark of “Park City.”

So, back to the question, “How did this happen?” It appears our friends at The Greater Park City Company (AKA Talisker) trademarked “Park City” in early 2014 and then assigned that to our friends at Vail later that year. So back when this was happening in early 2014, it wasn’t that our city couldn’t stand up to the big boys at Vail; it was something else. So what was it?

Was Park City Municipal unaware that this was happening? Did no one on the city council ever hear about his? Did the Chamber of Commerce not seen this coming? Or were any or all these groups aware but they decided not to fight it. We don’t have the answer for that.

Why Does it Matter to Locals

What we do know is that it is a big screw up; perhaps one of the biggest in a long time in these parts.

The problem is that there is confusion over the name. Even in the local paper, The Park Record, you’ll see the word Park City and its often not clear whether it is speaking of the resort or the town.

For example, if we hypothetically wrote…

Park City sucks
Park City parking is terrible
Park City restaurants are bad
Park City hotels are overpriced
Park City snow is the worst
Park City people are rude

… are we referring to the city, the resort, or both? Our beloved city is now inextricably linked to a ski resort. The fact that Vail, the city, and Vail, the resort, share the same name is not lost on us. However, in Park City’s case, the city was around about 150 years before the newly-named resort was even a glimmer in Robert Katz’s eyes.

This even becomes more of an issue with events that have defined Park City, the city, for years. Imagine in ten years someone saying to their friend “Park City is the host of the Sundance Film Festival” and their friend replies, “I didn’t know the film festival was at a ski resort.” It’s much like if we said, the “Vail Food and Wine Classic is coming up in May.” Are you thinking the wine is being served in the city of Vail? For most people they would associate that statement with the ski resort.

Why Does it Matter to Local Businesses

The thing about patents and trademarks is that they usually need to be defended, or they are no longer valid. Coca Cola can’t sit idly by and let 100 other soft drink manufacturers use the name Coke, or their claim over the trademark would no longer have merit.

The same is likely true with the trademark for “Park City.” That trademark covers a lot of ground. Let’s say you grew up in Park City, were a budding entrepreneur and wanted to open a ski shop. Do you think you could call it “Park City Ski Shop?” Unlikely. Perhaps you want to do something with lodging. Do you think you could trademark Park City Lodging? Oh, that’s a bad example, that trademark request is already being challenged by a subsidiary of Vail Resorts. Could you open “Park City Mini Golf.” Not likely, they own “mini golf” too. If you were into music, could you bring in bands around the world for the “Park City Music Fest?” Looks like conducting musical concerts is defined as part of trademark, as well. We could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Of course, we wouldn’t want to speak for Vail and what they would or wouldn’t legally do. That’s up to them, but they do own the trademark. We’ve always contended that they are the “smartest guys in the room” and we say that in an admiring way. Their acquisition of the trademark could, in the end, be huge for the company. We would call that savvy.

Yet, that doesn’t make it right. It’s not right for our town. It’s probably not right for our people. It’s likely not even right for Vail. At some point that confusion, in some way, will likely come back to haunt them.

What We’ve Done

We at the Park Rag are pretty much powerless, except to make commentary, criticism, and point out the issue. About all we can do is host this web page and hope that people read it. You may have noticed at the top of the page, we have exercised our fair use rights to combine the Park City Municipal logo with the Park City (ski resort) logo. They actually go very well together (maybe too well). We think this parody is a nice looking logo and would at least ask Park City, the city, to make it easy on us all and just adopt the logo. Perhaps they could go one step further, and just become a wholly owned subsidiary of Vail Mountain Resorts (kidding).

What We Hope Vail Will Do

We are under no illusion that Vail needs to do anything, but we hope they will consider doing two things for the sake of our joint community. First, we’d like them to rename their resort. There are so many good options that still contain the words Park City and can do the resort justice (i.e., the obvious one I’m sure Vail has considered is just Park City Mountain). Second, we would like them to use their braintrust to find a way to turn their trademark over to the public domain. It’s not enough just to disown it, as someone else will come in and pick it up. However, if the name could be protected but available for anyone to use it (forever), it would be a grand gesture to the people of Park City.

We Love Park City

Again, we love Park City. It’s a great place to live. It’s a great place to raise children. It’s almost perfect. Vail’s decision to use the words “Park City” for its resort are confusing and tarnishes the city. Vail’s trademark over the name Park City, and its ability to control its use in a number of areas, is somewhat chilling. We hope they’ll make a good decision for everyone involved and both rename the resort and set their trademark free.

Overall, I’m supportive of Park City’s move to make Round Valley an off leash dog area. Granted, I understand some people’s concerns that the city went from a total ban on dogs in the area to the exact opposite in one fail swoop. However, the fact that it’s a trial program, helps mitigate the issue a bit.

A few days ago Summit County displayed the bravado usually seen from Park City. They declared that Uber’s helicopter “taxis” for Sundance were illegal. They floated zoning and permit reasons for the illegality. While most people in the community don’t seem to like the idea of helicopters buzzing through the Basin, many people questioned whether it was really breaking any law. In the Park Record, Tom

Park City is known for much enthusiasm from local parents regarding their children regarding sports. If your kids isn’t ski jumping by age 7, you might as well not even start. If you aren’t taking advantage of school early release and having your kids on the slopes every day, you’re doing something wrong. Yet, it looks like those of with children in Park City are going to have to try even harder.

With Salt Lake looking more like Beijing every day, Parkites are rightly concerned with the quality of our air.

If you are interested or concernedd

A few days ago we received an email from a reader telling us that the Basin Rec’s joint master plan, with Park City Municipal, called the “Mountain Recreation Facilities Master Plan,” was obviously flawed. What was the reader’s reasoning? A new aquatic center makes no sense as one of the top 3 priorities for recreation around Park City. There are arguments on both sides on that one. However, it’s important to take a step back and look at something with regard to this “Master Plan.”

When was the Master Plan put together? 2013.

A better question might be, when was data, that drove the master plan, acquired? The Park Record tells us that the Master plan was developed after a community input survey that was taken in 2012.

So, we are moving forward with a Master Plan based on data gathered 4 years ago? What were you doing 4 years ago? Were your college aged kids, that no longer live at home, in high school back then? Were you worrying about Park City traffic 4 years ago? Do you have the same job? Do you still have the same passions?

Many things change in 4 years. Don’t we deserve to base multi-million dollar decisions on the latest information?

To be fair,

I had heard it was coming but the Park Record confirmed that the city’s new video on “Dog Etiquette” on its off leash trail at Round Valley and the Library was up.

When I first heard about it, I could

• Presentation at national level. First graders describing what an algorithm is.
• Work with Park Ed to increase salary
• Citizen asked abut continuation of AP versus IB since people think IB may be better.
  • So much memorization inAP says DR Conley
  • Education is trying to put in more rigor.
  • Dr Conley tried IB for a few years and it didn’t go well.
• Citizen asks how many kids do AP at high school
  • Dr Conley says students did 1400 test
  • Over 55% of kids took AP class.
  • Citizen says it is good that the district has choice.
• Numbers for all day kidergarten are good
  • The board asked for 1.5 redsitribution from no instructiona l to instructional. If you tok that it would $800K to 1.1 million. But we’ve now been abel to shift and are at $550K. WE’ve added 14 FTE. WE have 12 teachers, a nurse, and a councilor. In 2008 we cut a huge amount of maintenance and custodial and we can’t, with our pay structure is, we can’t get subs. We put in a request to hire roving custodian and maintenance person. So, we have added a little to budget to custodian and maintenance. Requested that Molly go full time. After school administrator being shifted into a teacher. Restructuring transportation.
• Citizen asks if any more school start times. It won’t happen this next school year. The hardest thing is that the other communities that have implemented later start times, the traffic patterns are many different. We are going to have to continue to work with our cities and minimize the traffic. If we are going to go to later start times, it means riding the bus and carpooling. So, with th start times things are going in tthe right direction and we will go there.
• Citizen asks if survey is still going to come out. Answer is yes.
• School District working with county on new land next to Jeremy Ranch.
• One of things learned from post bond survey is that parents with kids understand how bad Treasure Mountain is but adults without kids don’t understand.
• Starting to re-form team that will look at high school.
• Board will be voting to hire an architect. Putting $140K in
• Shuttled direct from areas is something we’d like to look at.
• Citizen asks about later start times and impact on sports. Another citizen says it’s hard to go to tournaments with later time.
  • Citizen says there must be a way to adjust school schedules perhaps 80 minute classes.
• Hard to put 6-8th grade
  • Hard for dual language
  • First year dual immersion will be at TMJH
  • French teachers easy
• Vail funds our preschool through Ed foundation they have funded it. All day pre school at Parley’s this year. Next year at McPolin.
• Met yesteday with chiefo of pioilice, sherrif, Emergency response coordinator. This year at Sundance will have checks to open your bag. What are added risk to children?
• Getting to a place where we have critical conversation.
• Conley says she’s always open to new ideas.
• In any field it takes about 10 years to be an expert. In education, we can teach a techer in 6 years to be an expert. You have 6 years. Most teacherhave een here 12-16 years. More vertarna teachers …