San Diego wins fight for “comic con” name

SAN DIEGO» A jury on Friday sided with San Diego ComicCon in a court battle with a rival pop-culture convention in Utah over rights to use the phrase “comic con.”

The panel decided that Salt Lake Comic Con used the trademarked phrase without permission, though they didn’t do so willfully. The panel awarded the California event $20,000, far less than the $12 million they’d sought.

“From the beginning all that we asked of the defendants was to stop using our Comic-Con trademarks,” the San Diego Comic Convention said in a statement. “Today we obtained a verdict that will allow us to achieve this.”

Utah co-founder Dan Farr told Salt Lake City TV station KUTV they plan to appeal.

Lawyers for the well-known San Diego convention argued during the trial that the Salt Lake event stole their name to benefit from their reputation built over years of hard work, Salt Lake City-based newspaper The Deseret News reported.

The San Diego event that’s considered the flagship of the popular convention circuit filed a trademark violation lawsuit against the Salt Lake convention in 2014. Their request for $12 million in damages included a $9 million advertising campaign to clear up any confusion.

Salt Lake, though, maintains the phrase is a generic shortened form of “comic book convention” and used by 140 events around the country.

Salt Lake organizers saw dozens of unaffiliated events using the term and genuinely thought it was usable when they named their event in 2013, co-founder Bryan Brandenburg testified.

Salt Lake Comic Con has quickly grown to attract more than 120,000 people.