So this been relatively big news in my area (I live in a suburb of Salt Lake City), but seems to be flying under the radar elsewhere.
On July 25th, the operators of the Salt Lake Comic Con (SLCC) received this letter (.pdf format) from the law firm representing San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC). In the letter, the lawyers for SDCC write that the operators of SLCC must "immediately discontinue all use of 'Comic Con', 'Comic-Con', 'Comiccon' or any other confusingly similar variation of the Comic Con marks in connection with convention services."
The long and the short of it is that, according to this letter, SDCC considers "Comic Con", "Comic-Con", etc, to be its intellectual property (see the subject line of the letter).
SLCC issued this press release in response to the letter. In the release, SLCC founder Dan Farr says that the cease and desist order is "baseless", and that "We intend to vigorously defend ourselves from this frivolous action." The press release also says that by making this claim, SDCC is "challenging hundreds of comic conventions around the country and the world already using the words comic con for their show." Lawyers for SLCC intend to formally reply to the cease and desist order this week.
The strife between the two conventions seems to have been sparked by SLCC's plan to take a promotional vehicle to San Diego during SDCC as part of a ticket give away contest. According to SLCC co-founder Bryan Brandonberg (as he says in the video on this local news site, unfortunately they don't quote it in the article so you have to watch the video to see it), SDCC had previously contacted SLCC with concerns about the car. Brandonberg claims that SLCC agreed to not take the car to San Diego, but when SDCC hit them with the cease and desist order anyways, they decided to continue as planned with the car since "the damage had already been done."
While it might not seem like a big deal, as Salt Lake City is a relatively small market in the big scheme of things, the Salt Lake Comic Con has been amazingly popular. The first SLCC was last September, and opened with 70,000 guests, making it the largest first year Con in the United States. A second event, FanXperince, held in April 2014 saw more than 100,000 attendees, making it the 3rd largest Con the U.S. (incidentally, FanX was held the same weekend as SDCC's WonderCon, which has lead to some speculation that this has also caused some bad blood between the two).
Now, to be fair, almost all the news about this is coming from Salt Lake Comic Con's side as they have decided to make this a very public battle. I couldn't find anything from San Diego Comic Con's people pertaining to this outside of the original cease and desist order and a few responses to other websites stating that they are obligated to protect their trademark.
Being from Utah, most of the responses I've seen to this news has been firmly in support of Salt Lake Comic Con...which is why I bring this here. I am curious to see what an unbiased audience has to say about this.
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