A Last Best Place Wiki

Helping a Trademark Bid Go “Paws Up”

By Courtney Lowery, 8-01-05

Rob at Wulfgar! hatched a great idea last week: show Paws Up Ranch owner David E. Lipson a thing or two by asking Montana bloggers to rename their pages Monday using "The Last Best Place." (Many did today in a showing of great solidarity -- good work!) Lipson is the guy who's trying to trademark that signature Montana phrase, but Montanans are not inclined to let him get away with it.

As part of our contribution to the campaign to save "The Last Best Place," we've set up fairly new-fangled publishing contraption called a Wiki at www.savethelastbestplace.org. The idea of a Wiki is to enable people collectively to gather information, write about and comment on a particularly topic, and we thought this might be a good way to create a kind of clearinghouse and forum for the Last Best Place controversy.

I spoke today with Bob Griffin, the Billings attorney filing the opposition on the state's behalf. He says over the next few months, he will be taking "discovery" for a deposition to file with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which will be making the final decision on Lipson's applications. In doing so, he says we could help him by collecting comments on www.savethelastbestplace.org as to why we do not think Lipson should have exclusive commerical use for the phrase. He specifically would like to know "How people are using 'The Last Best Place,' if they're using it themselves, where they've seen it and where it is being used." He says he would also be interested to hear what folks' subjective feelings are about what the phrase means to them, to the businesses they know that use it and to the state in general.

You can edit the content on the Wiki, add pages, link back to your own blog or other writings, and submit your comments to help in the legal battle -- all in the name of making sure "The Last Best Place" remains the property of all Montanans.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.