From The New West Blog

Montana Phrase “The Last Best Place” to be Protected

By Matthew Frank, 8-18-08

	William Kittredge reading at the Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula. Photo by Matt Cochran.

The phrase “The Last Best Place,” Montanans’ favorite descriptor of their state, may soon be protected forever now that Senate and House committees have approved language in a Department of Commerce appropriations bill that forbids the department from registering or enforcing a trademark of the phrase, Jim Robbins of The New York Times reports.

This after Las Vegas business David Lipson in 2005 attempted to gain exclusive rights to the phrase for his high-end Montana resort Paws Up. “The move caused an uproar among Montanans, and tapped into deep feelings about the trend of wealthy out-of-staters buying up property,” as Robbins puts it.

The state intervened, as did its senators:

In 2004, Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, made the first legislative attempt to stop Mr. Lipson from obtaining a trademark for the term, but Mr. Lipson filed a lawsuit against the copyright office to overturn that language. Mr. Lipson won, but the case was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

[Senator Max] Baucus introduced a bill with stronger language after the first court decision, effectively banning the Department of Commerce from issuing a trademark for the phase “The Last Best Place.” The measure passed, but because it was part of a budget bill, it had to be reintroduced every year.

This year new, stronger language should end the matter for good, Mr. Baucus’s office said, and Mr. Lipson and The Last Best Beef will never own the trademark.

The wording was coined by Montana author William Kittredge, and was first used as the title of an anthology of Montana writers published in 1988 by the Montana Historical Society and edited by Kittredge and Annick Smith.

“I was thinking of the book ‘The Last Good Kiss’ by James Crumley, and Lincoln’s statement that the U.S. was the last best hope of mankind,” Mr. Kittredge said. “The phrase popped into my head and I said, ‘How about The Last Best Place?’ ”

“It immediately took on a life of its own,” he said.

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