{"id":8722,"date":"2026-08-29T18:55:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T01:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/?p=8722"},"modified":"2026-08-29T18:55:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T01:55:37","slug":"vexatious-by-design-when-the-lds-church-says-come-unto-christ-does-it-mean-through-the-courthouse-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/2026\/08\/29\/vexatious-by-design-when-the-lds-church-says-come-unto-christ-does-it-mean-through-the-courthouse-door\/","title":{"rendered":"Vexatious by Design: When the LDS Church Says \u201cCome Unto Christ,\u201d Does It Mean Through the Courthouse Door?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image:<\/strong> An AI-generated image imagines a group of handsomely dressed lawyers frantically digging a hole near an LDS temple to find archeological evidence against brand infringement.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Friends of John Dehlin Want to Know. Furthermore, Was The Lawsuit Obtained By Revelation?<\/span><\/p>\n

Twenty Years of Silence, the Manufacture of \u201cConfusion,\u201d and the LDS Church\u2019s Case Against Mormon Stories<\/span><\/p>\n

A Revised and Expanded Legal Analysis of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Open Stories Foundation and John P. Dehlin<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Updated Through the August 2026 Filings<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

I. Introduction: The Cost Is the Point<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

There is a species of lawsuit that is not built to be won. It is built to be survived \u2014 and only one side is expected to survive it.<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

American courts have a name for the phenomenon, though they apply it sparingly and with visible discomfort: vexatious litigation.<\/strong><\/span> The doctrine is deliberately narrow. Judges are reluctant to police motive; the Federal Rules presume good faith until the record forecloses it; and a plaintiff with a colorable claim is entitled to press it however unattractive the optics. But the underlying dynamic is not narrow at all, and every practicing intellectual-property lawyer in the country recognizes it on sight. A well-capitalized institution identifies a critic. It does not need a strong claim. It needs a plausible one. It files. And then it steps back and lets arithmetic finish the work that argument cannot.<\/p>\n

The arithmetic is a matter of public record. According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association\u2019s 2025 economic survey \u2014 cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the amicus brief it filed in this very case \u2014 the median cost of carrying a trademark claim through trial and appeal runs somewhere between $250,000 and $1.1 million per party. Merely reaching the far side of discovery and motion practice costs between $100,000 and $375,000. Those are not the numbers of a contest between equals. They are the numbers of a siege.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On one side of this particular siege sits The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, together with its intellectual-property arm, Intellectual Reserve, Inc., represented by the Texas trademark specialists at Pirkey Barber. On the other sits a nonprofit called the Open Stories Foundation and a man the Church excommunicated eleven years ago for saying things it did not want said. The Church has the deeper bench, the longer clock, and the better balance sheet. What it does not have \u2014 and this is the burden of the pages that follow \u2014 is a coherent account of the injury it claims to have suffered.<\/p>\n

On August 20, 2026, the Church filed its memorandum opposing the defendants\u2019 motion to dismiss and, for the first time since April, sent a spokesman before the cameras in Salt Lake City. The appearance lasted roughly two minutes. Its purpose was to establish a single proposition, repeated in the filing, repeated on the Church\u2019s own Newsroom page, and repeated in every headline that followed: this case is not about the word \u201cMormon,\u201d and it is not about criticism. It is about confusion.<\/p>\n

That word deserves a much harder look than it has received. Confusion is not a mood. In trademark law, it is a legal term of art with an evidentiary spine, a doctrinal test, and a set of factual predicates that a plaintiff must actually establish. When those predicates are laid alongside the Church\u2019s own filings, its own published branding directives, its own chronology, and its own twenty-year silence, the confusion theory does not merely weaken. In several important places it collapses under the weight of documents the Church itself put into the record.<\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

II. The Record as It Now Stands: A 2026 Chronology<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Before evaluating any argument, the sequence of events must be fixed, because in this case the sequence is itself the argument.<\/p>\n

\u2022 2005<\/strong><\/span> \u2014 John Dehlin launches Mormon Stories. The podcast operates continuously under that name for more than two decades, publishing thousands of interviews with current and former members of the Church, historians, scholars, and other observers of the tradition.
\n\u2022 November 1, 2010<\/strong> <\/span>\u2014 The Church represents to the United States Patent and Trademark Office that it will use \u201cBook of Mormon Stories\u201d in connection with podcasts. Mormon Stories is by then five years old and unopposed.
\n\u2022 February 2015<\/strong> <\/span>\u2014 Dehlin is excommunicated for apostasy. Church leaders object at length to what he says. They do not object to what he calls it.
\n\u2022 August 2018<\/strong> <\/span>\u2014 President Russell M. Nelson announces the institutional retirement of \u201cMormon\u201d and \u201cLDS,\u201d describing continued use of the nicknames as a major victory for Satan. Mormon.org and lds.org are redirected; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is renamed; the Newsroom style guide is rewritten to discourage the term.
\n\u2022 December 2022<\/strong> <\/span>\u2014 Mormon Stories changes its logo from brown to blue and adopts a revised design treatment. This is the date on which every design element the Church now identifies as infringing first appears.
\n\u2022 November 2025<\/strong><\/span> \u2014 The Church\u2019s Intellectual Property Office contacts the Open Stories Foundation privately for the first time in the podcast\u2019s twenty-year history.
\n\u2022 Winter\u2013Spring 2026<\/strong><\/span> \u2014 Mediation. Mormon Stories changes its logo color to orange, alters the design, removes Church-copyrighted photographs, and adds the Church\u2019s own preferred disclaimer language to the podcast description on every platform. Mediation nonetheless fails.
\n\u2022 April 17, 2026<\/strong><\/span> \u2014 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. and the Church file suit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah, alleging trademark infringement, unfair competition, and copyright infringement. The Church publishes \u201cGetting It Right\u201d on its Newsroom the same day.
\n\u2022 June 22, 2026<\/strong><\/span> \u2014 The Open Stories Foundation and Dehlin file a Motion to Dismiss together with an Answer and Counterclaims, arguing abandonment of \u201cMormon\u201d as a mark, misrepresentation to the USPTO, descriptive and nominative fair use, and First Amendment protection.
\n\u2022 August 7, 2026<\/strong><\/span> \u2014 The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah and the Electronic Frontier Foundation file separate amicus curiae briefs. Both urge dismissal. Both ask that dismissal be with prejudice.
\n\u2022 August 20, 2026<\/strong> <\/span>\u2014 The Church files its memorandum in opposition to the motion to dismiss (Docket No. 71), updates its Newsroom post, and holds a short press availability. The motion remains pending before the court.<\/p>\n

Read straight through, the chronology tells a story the Church\u2019s brief does not: twenty years of unbroken silence, followed by a private letter, followed by a failed mediation, followed by a federal complaint \u2014 all of it arriving eight years after the plaintiff publicly instructed the world to stop using the word at the center of the dispute.<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

III. What the Church Said on August 20 \u2014 Stated Fairly<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Fairness requires that the Church\u2019s position be set out at its strongest before it is answered. Its August 20 filing opens by disclaiming the two motives most often attributed to it. The case, it says, does not target the content of the defendants\u2019 speech, and it does not concern ownership of the word \u201cMormon.\u201d What it concerns is stated in a single clause:<\/p>\n

\u2026 this case is about eliminating the confusion caused by Defendants\u2019 mimicking the Church\u2019s trademarks \u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Plaintiffs\u2019 Memorandum in Opposition to Motion to Dismiss (Aug. 20, 2026)<\/b>, reproduced on the Church\u2019s official Newsroom<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The filing proceeds on four principal lines. First, it argues that Dehlin has committed what Lanham Act practice calls the \u201ccardinal sin\u201d of trademark law \u2014 confusing consumers about the source of a product. Second, it maintains that Dehlin uses \u201cMormon Stories\u201d as a mark in its own right, registered or not, and that the Church holds a registration for \u201cBook of Mormon Stories.\u201d Third, it observes \u2014 accurately \u2014 that Dehlin has conceded using Church photographs without permission and conceded that some of his logos resembled the Church\u2019s. Fourth, it argues that the disclaimers Dehlin added are functionally invisible: on the main website the disclaimer sits at the bottom, roughly four screens down, and on YouTube and Spotify it appears only after a listener clicks through to a secondary page.<\/p>\n

The Church also invokes a principle no serious observer disputes: that religious institutions are entitled to the protection of the trademark laws to the same extent as commercial enterprises, and that names and symbols carry messages central to a religious mission. That is settled, and this analysis does not contest it.<\/p>\n

Outside the courthouse, the Church\u2019s spokesman put the same position in plainer language:<\/p>\n

The Church has always acknowledged Mr. Dehlin\u2019s First Amendment right to criticize the Church \u2026 this case is not about preventing people from using the word Mormon.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Doug Andersen, Church spokesman<\/b>,<\/span> reported by Jeff Tavss, FOX 13 News Utah (KSTU), Aug. 20, 2026<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is the case as the plaintiff wishes it to be understood: a narrow, technical, brand-integrity action, regrettable but unavoidable, aimed at design elements rather than at speech. It is a well-constructed public posture. It is also, on the documents the Church has itself filed, unsustainable.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

IV. The Confusion Claim, Examined \u2014 and Refuted<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

IV.1 Confusion Is a Legal Standard, Not a Feeling<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Under 15 U.S.C. \u00a7 1114, the question is never whether some person somewhere could conceivably be confused. Human beings are confusable about nearly everything. The statutory question is whether there exists a likelihood of confusion among an appreciable segment of relevant consumers as to source, sponsorship, or affiliation \u2014 a probability, not a possibility. Courts resolve it through fact-intensive multi-factor balancing: strength of the senior mark, similarity of the marks, similarity of the goods or services, evidence of actual confusion, defendant\u2019s intent, marketing channels, consumer sophistication, and the likelihood that the parties will bridge the gap between their respective markets.<\/p>\n

This matters because the Church\u2019s public framing quietly performs a substitution. It treats \u201cconfusion\u201d as a self-evident social fact \u2014 something people have reported, something the Church has heard about, something that exists in the world and must be eliminated. But the Church is not entitled to a remedy because confusion exists.<\/strong><\/em><\/span> It is entitled to a remedy only if confusion is likely, among relevant consumers, and attributable to the defendant\u2019s use of protectable marks. Each of those three qualifiers is doing enormous work, and each of them is in serious trouble here.<\/p>\n

IV.2 The 2016 Problem: The Church\u2019s Own Dates Refute the Church\u2019s Own Theory<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

This is the heart of the matter, and it deserves to be stated with precision.<\/p>\n

The Church\u2019s complaint asserts that the confusion it seeks to eliminate began in 2016. That date is not incidental; it establishes the temporal scope of the alleged injury and, by extension, the scope of any damages. But the Church\u2019s August 20 position \u2014 stated in its filing, on its Newsroom, and by its spokesman before the cameras \u2014 is that the case is not about the word \u201cMormon\u201d at all. It is about design: the blue palette, the light-rays motif, the fonts, the Christus imagery, the copyrighted photographs.<\/p>\n

Those design elements did not exist in 2016. By the Church\u2019s own account, and by the reporting of its own newspaper, Mormon Stories used a brown logo until December 2022, when it switched to blue. Every visual element the Church now describes as the true grievance postdates the alleged onset of confusion by roughly six years.<\/p>\n

The consequence is unavoidable. If confusion began in 2016, it cannot have been caused by design elements introduced in 2022.<\/strong><\/em><\/span> And in 2016 there was exactly one thing distinguishing Mormon Stories that the Church could conceivably have objected to: the name. Which means one of two things is true. Either the Church\u2019s 2016 confusion allegation is an assertion about the word \u201cMormon\u201d \u2014 in which case its August 20 disclaimer is not accurate \u2014 or the 2016 allegation has no evidentiary basis at all, in which case the complaint overstates the injury by six years and the Church\u2019s damages theory contracts accordingly.<\/p>\n

There is no third option. A plaintiff cannot simultaneously date its injury to a period in which the only distinguishing feature was the name and then insist to the press that the name was never the issue. The observation was surfaced almost immediately by readers working through the filings on the r\/mormon forum, and it survives scrutiny because it does not depend on any contested fact. It depends only on two dates the Church itself supplied.<\/p>\n

If the confusion began in 2016, it cannot have been caused by design elements introduced in 2022.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 The arithmetic of the Church\u2019s own complaint<\/strong>,<\/strong> <\/span>first surfaced in community analysis of the August 20 opposition brief, r\/mormon<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

IV.3 Criticism Is Not Confusable With Its Target<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The second structural problem with the confusion theory is that Mormon Stories is not a lookalike. It is an adversary. For twenty years it has published sustained, documented, frequently devastating criticism of the institution now suing it<\/strong><\/em><\/span> \u2014 on Church finances, on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, on the treatment of sexual-abuse disclosures, on LGBTQ policy, on the mechanics of ecclesiastical discipline. A listener does not arrive at an episode and wonder for long whether it is official.<\/p>\n

Federal courts have said so directly. The Fourth Circuit\u2019s decision in Radiance Foundation v. NAACP \u2014 quoted by the ACLU of Utah in its amicus brief \u2014 disposes of the point in a sentence:<\/p>\n

it is not immediately apparent how someone would confuse [a podcast] which is strongly critical of an organization with the organization itself.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Radiance Foundation, Inc. v. NAACP, 786 F.3d 316 (4th Cir. 2015)<\/b>, as quoted in the ACLU of Utah amicus brief, Aug. 7, 2026<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Church\u2019s answer is that confusion occurs at the moment of first encounter \u2014 a thumbnail, a search result, a social-media avatar \u2014 before the content is heard. That is a real doctrine, sometimes called initial-interest confusion, and it is not frivolous. But it is also disfavored in several circuits; it has never been adopted with enthusiasm in the Tenth, and it is at its weakest precisely where the parties do not compete. The Church does not produce excommunicant-led oral-history journalism. Mormon Stories does not produce sacrament-meeting curricula. A momentary glance that resolves the instant a listener presses play is not the injury the Lanham Act was written to redress.<\/p>\n

IV.4 The Disclaimer Paradox<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The Church\u2019s most concrete complaint is that the disclaimers are hard to find: four screens down on the website, one click away on YouTube and Spotify. Taken alone, that is a fair criticism, and a court could reasonably order more prominent placement.<\/p>\n

But the argument proves less than the Church needs, and it costs more than the Church seems to realize. Mormon Stories did not refuse to disclaim. It adopted the Church\u2019s own preferred disclaimer language and placed it in the podcast description on every platform. What it refused was the Church\u2019s escalated demand that a disclaimer be read or displayed at the beginning of every video and every episode \u2014 a compelled-speech requirement imposed on a critic, in perpetuity, at the front of thousands of hours of expressive work.<\/p>\n

That refusal is the actual disagreement, and it is not a trademark disagreement. It is a dispute about how much of a critic\u2019s expressive real estate an institution may commandeer as the price of naming the institution accurately. Framed that way \u2014 which is how it will be framed on the motion \u2014 the Church\u2019s position is considerably less modest than \u201ca brief disclaimer,\u201d and considerably closer to the compelled endorsement of an adversary\u2019s framing.<\/p>\n

There is a further difficulty. A plaintiff who says confusion is severe enough to warrant federal injunctive relief, but curable by a sentence of boilerplate, has conceded that the confusion is shallow. Deep, source-level confusion is not fixed by a disclaimer. Shallow confusion is not worth a federal lawsuit. The Church cannot hold both ends of that rope.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

IV.5 \u201cNot About the Word\u201d \u2014 Measured Against What Was Demanded in Mediation<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The Church\u2019s central public assurance is that Dehlin may keep using \u201cMormon.\u201d Against that assurance stands Dehlin\u2019s account of what the Church\u2019s own attorneys asked for at the mediation table. He has stated publicly \u2014 without contradiction from Church counsel, who declined to respond when asked \u2014 that he was pressed to rename the program \u201cEx-Mormon Stories\u201d or \u201cPost-Mormon Stories,\u201d and asked to sign declarations forswearing use of \u201cMormon\u201d in future projects and forswearing any future trademark application for \u201cMormon Stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that account is accurate, the Church\u2019s public position and its private negotiating position are not the same. A party that demands a permanent contractual surrender of a word is not indifferent to the word. And the demand that the podcast be retitled with the prefix \u201cEx-\u201d or \u201cPost-\u201d is revealing in a second way: neither prefix does anything whatever to address blue palettes, light rays, fonts, or photographs. Both address only the speaker\u2019s relationship to the institution \u2014 which is to say, the content of the speech.<\/p>\n

This is the point at which the vexatious-litigation framing stops being rhetorical. When the relief sought in private is broader than the injury pleaded in public, the gap between them is where a court looks for motive.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

IV.6 The Consistency Claim<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The Church\u2019s Newsroom FAQ asks whether it enforces its trademarks consistently and answers with a single word: yes. It adds that it reviews hundreds of potential trademark matters each year and that most are resolved amicably through private outreach.<\/p>\n

The claim is testable, and it does not survive the test. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been litigating against this plaintiff\u2019s trademark theories for more than a decade, documents a pattern with a shape: enforcement lands on parties who cannot afford to fight. In 2014, the Church pursued Mormon Match, a dating service for Church members. In 2016 it threatened the Mormon Mental Health Association, a nonprofit of clinicians serving members of Mormon faiths. In 2023 it opposed Heather Gay\u2019s application to register \u201cBad Mormon,\u201d and she withdrew. In 2025 it pressed Burke Sorenson to rename his Mormon News Roundup podcast. In 2026 it sued Mormon Stories.<\/p>\n

Now consider the uses that have gone entirely unchallenged across the same period: the Journal of Mormon History<\/strong><\/span>; the Mormon Studies Review<\/strong><\/span>; the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies<\/strong><\/span> at Utah State University; Mormon Land<\/strong><\/span>, a podcast published by The Salt Lake Tribune; the Mormonish Podcast<\/strong><\/span>; Mormon Coffee<\/strong><\/span>; and, on the entertainment side, FX\u2019s Under the Banner of Heaven and TLC\u2019s Sister Wives \u2014 both of which are marketed to the general public with the word \u201cMormon\u201d in their promotional vocabulary and neither of which has any affiliation with the Church.<\/p>\n

The variable that separates the two lists is not confusion. Under the Banner of Heaven reached a vastly larger audience than any independent podcast, and its subject matter was incomparably more damaging to the Church\u2019s brand. The variable is the defendant\u2019s capacity to absorb legal costs. An enforcement program that consistently spares Disney and consistently pursues nonprofits is not consistent. It is calibrated.<\/p>\n

And calibration has a doctrinal price. Selective enforcement weakens a mark. A mark holder who tolerates widespread third-party use in the same commercial and cultural space cannot then claim that a single tolerated user is the source of consumer confusion.<\/strong><\/em><\/span> If the public has spent twenty years encountering \u201cMormon\u201d in the titles of histories, journals, newspapers, podcasts, and prestige television without confusion, the public is not going to be confused by one more.<\/p>\n

IV.7 Anecdote Is Not Evidence: The Missing Survey<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Finally, there is the question of proof.<\/strong> <\/em><\/span>The complaint\u2019s evidence of actual confusion consists of selected comments harvested from Facebook and YouTube \u2014 unverified, self-selecting, and unquantified. Such comments are admissible. They are also, standing alone, among the weakest forms of proof in trademark practice, and federal courts routinely discount them absent a properly designed consumer survey or systematic data.<\/p>\n

That is not a technicality. Survey evidence exists precisely because internet comments cannot distinguish between a person genuinely misled as to source and a person expressing surprise, irony, or disapproval. A commenter who writes that a channel looked official at first glance has not necessarily been deceived; a commenter asking whether a channel is run by Mormons or ex-Mormons has demonstrated awareness that the two are different, which is the opposite of source confusion.<\/p>\n

If, after twenty years and a claimed decade of confusion, the plaintiff\u2019s best evidence remains a handful of comment-thread screenshots, the plaintiff has an evidence problem that no amount of press-conference framing will repair.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

V. Twenty Years of Silence: The Doctrine the Church Cannot Outrun<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

If the confusion theory is the weakest part of the Church\u2019s case on the evidence, the twenty-year delay is the weakest part on the law. This section is the center of gravity of the entire dispute, and it deserves to be developed at length, because the passage of time in trademark practice is not a public-relations embarrassment. It is a defense.<\/p>\n

V.1 The Shape of the Silence<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Mormon Stories began publishing in 2005. It has operated continuously under the same name ever since. During those two decades, it did not hide. It became one of the most visible independent voices in the Mormon information ecosystem, was covered by national outlets, was named in an internal Church presentation identifying influences said to be leading members away from the faith, and generated an excommunication proceeding against its founder that drew coverage from the Associated Press, NBC News, and CBS News.<\/p>\n

The Church, in other words, knew. It knew in 2007,<\/strong><\/span> when the podcast was already established. It knew in 2013,<\/strong><\/span> when the first disciplinary inquiry began. It knew in 2015,<\/strong> <\/span>when a stake presidency in Logan, Utah convened a council and excommunicated Dehlin for apostasy. It knew in 2017,<\/strong> <\/span>when leaked internal materials placed him on a list of perceived threats. It knew in 2018,<\/strong><\/span> when it undertook the most extensive rebranding in its modern history and rewrote its own style guide around the very word at issue. It knew every year, in every one of those years, and it said nothing about the name.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The first formal objection to the branding arrived in a letter from the Church\u2019s Intellectual Property Office in November 2025. That is a delay of approximately twenty years and two months from the podcast\u2019s launch, and approximately ten years from the excommunication.<\/p>\n

V.2 The 2015 Excommunication Is the Single Most Damaging Fact in the Record<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

It is worth pausing on 2015, because the significance of that year is easy to underrate.<\/p>\n

In 2015 the Church convened a formal disciplinary council against John Dehlin. It made a considered institutional judgment about him. It produced a written decision. It issued public statements about that decision. Its representatives explained, at length and on the record, precisely what he had done that the Church found intolerable: disputing the nature of God and Christ, calling the Church\u2019s foundational texts into question, and publicly teaching that the Church is not what it claims to be.<\/p>\n

At no point in that proceeding \u2014 the single most deliberate, most documented, most legally attentive interaction between these two parties before 2025 \u2014 did the Church tell John Dehlin to stop calling his podcast Mormon Stories. Its own newspaper has since confirmed the point plainly: the Church did not seek to keep him from using the term, and its lawsuit does not now ask the court to do so either.<\/p>\n

That is not neutral. In equity, silence in circumstances demanding speech is itself communicative. When a party undertakes a formal adjudication of another party\u2019s conduct, catalogues its grievances in writing, imposes the harshest sanction available to it, and omits any mention of the name under which that conduct is published, it has communicated something about the name. What it communicated, for the next ten years, was that the name was not the problem.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

V.3 The Seniority Inversion: Who Was First in Podcasting?<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

There is a further wrinkle in the chronology that has received almost no attention and ought to receive a great deal.<\/p>\n

The Church\u2019s asserted registration in this space is \u201cBook of Mormon Stories.\u201d According to the defendants\u2019 filings, the Church first represented to the United States Patent and Trademark Office that it would use that mark in connection with podcasts on November 1, 2010.<\/p>\n

Mormon Stories launched in 2005.<\/p>\n

Whatever else is true, then, the podcast is the senior user in the podcasting channel by five years. Trademark rights in the United States flow from use in commerce, not from registration alone; registration creates a presumption of validity, but it cannot manufacture priority that use did not create. A plaintiff asserting a 2010 podcasting representation against a 2005 podcast is not asserting seniority. It is asserting that the junior user in the relevant channel may nonetheless police the senior one, on the strength of a registration obtained while the senior user published unopposed. That argument can be made. It cannot be made comfortably.<\/p>\n

V.4 Laches: The Doctrine and the Presumption<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Laches bars equitable relief where a plaintiff has unreasonably delayed asserting a known right and the defendant has been prejudiced by the delay. In federal trademark practice, because the Lanham Act contains no general limitations period, courts borrow the most analogous state statute of limitations as a presumptive trigger. Utah\u2019s general limitations period for fraud and analogous commercial torts is four years; for written contracts, six.<\/p>\n

Once the analogous period has run, the presumption inverts. Delay beyond it is presumptively unreasonable, and the burden shifts to the plaintiff to justify it. Here the delay is not four years, or six, or ten. It is twenty. There is no serious argument that a twenty-year silence in the face of open, notorious, commercially active, nationally covered use falls inside any borrowing period any court would apply.<\/p>\n

Prejudice, the second element, is equally plain and comes in both recognized forms. Evidentiary prejudice: witnesses to the podcast\u2019s founding and early branding decisions have aged, moved on, or died; contemporaneous documents from 2005 to 2012 are incomplete; and the Church\u2019s own internal deliberations about whether to object during those years are now reconstructions rather than records. Economic prejudice: over twenty years the Open Stories Foundation built an audience, a donor base, a catalogue of thousands of episodes, a search-engine footprint, and an institutional identity entirely around the contested name. Every dollar of that goodwill was accumulated in reliance on the plaintiff\u2019s silence. Requiring its abandonment now is not the removal of an infringing ornament. It is the confiscation of an enterprise.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

V.5 Acquiescence: The Harder Doctrine<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Laches punishes sleeping on rights. Acquiescence punishes something worse: conduct that affirmatively signals the rights will not be enforced. Where laches requires only unreasonable delay plus prejudice, acquiescence converts delay into something close to consent \u2014 and unlike laches, which in some circuits is unavailable against claims of intentional infringement, acquiescence goes to the plaintiff\u2019s own conduct rather than the defendant\u2019s state of mind.<\/p>\n

The record here is unusually rich in potential acquiescence evidence, all of it available in discovery:<\/strong><\/em><\/span> whether Church employees, public-affairs personnel, or agents ever monitored, referenced, or internally discussed Mormon Stories without recommending enforcement; whether any Church representative or affiliated scholar ever appeared on the program or corresponded with it; whether the Intellectual Property Office ever opened and closed a file on the podcast in the years before 2025; and, most pointedly, what the Church\u2019s own counsel concluded about the name during the 2013\u20132015 disciplinary process. A twenty-year internal record of noting the podcast and declining to act would be devastating.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting what the Church\u2019s own Newsroom says on this point: that its standard practice is private outreach and that most matters resolve amicably. If that is genuinely the institutional practice, and if it was applied hundreds of times a year for twenty years without once being applied to the best-known independent use of \u201cMormon\u201d in American media, the omission is not oversight. It is a decision \u2014 repeated annually, for two decades.<\/p>\n

V.6 Estoppel and the Mediation Record<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Equitable estoppel completes the triad. It bars a plaintiff whose conduct has misled the defendant into a detrimental reliance. The relevant conduct here is not merely the silence but the affirmative institutional messaging that accompanied it. Between 2018 and 2025, the Church told the public, the press, and its own membership to stop using \u201cMormon.\u201d Its style guide said so. Its president said so from the pulpit of General Conference. Its websites were redirected accordingly. Its choir was renamed.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A third party observing that campaign would reasonably conclude two things: that the Church did not wish to be identified by the term, and that the Church was therefore unlikely to sue anyone for using it. The second conclusion follows so naturally from the first that a reasonable person would be entitled to rely on it<\/strong><\/em><\/span> \u2014 and Mormon Stories did rely on it, continuing to invest in a brand the plaintiff was publicly disowning.<\/p>\n

There is an additional estoppel dimension in the mediation itself. Mormon Stories responded to the November 2025 letter by making changes: recoloring the logo, altering the design, stripping the copyrighted photographs, and adopting the Church\u2019s own disclaimer language. Those are the acts of a party attempting to comply.<\/strong><\/em><\/span> When a rights-holder\u2019s demands are substantially met, and the rights-holder sues anyway over the residue, a court is entitled to ask what the demands were actually for.<\/p>\n

V.7 The \u201cNew Infringement Resets the Clock\u201d Rejoinder \u2014 and Its Limits<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The Church\u2019s answer to all of this is the doctrine of progressive encroachment: a senior user is not obliged to sue over a trivial or distant use, and the clock restarts when the junior user materially expands into infringing territory. On that theory, the December 2022 redesign is a new wrong, and the twenty years before it are legally irrelevant.<\/p>\n

The argument has genuine force and should not be dismissed. But it carries two high costs the Church has not acknowledged.<\/p>\n

The first is that it concedes the case away from the name. If the actionable conduct began in December 2022, then everything before December 2022 was lawful \u2014 including twenty years of publishing under the title \u201cMormon Stories.\u201d The Church cannot invoke progressive encroachment to escape laches and simultaneously maintain that confusion dates to 2016. The two positions are mutually destructive, and the Church has now asserted both.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The second is that progressive encroachment shrinks the remedy to fit the wrong. If the new infringement is a palette and a design motif, the remedy is a palette and a design motif \u2014 both of which have already been changed. Mormon Stories moved its logo from blue to orange and removed the contested imagery before this brief was filed. A defendant who has voluntarily abated the only conduct that survives the laches analysis has substantially mooted the case, leaving a copyright claim over images already withdrawn and a trademark claim over a name that twenty years of silence has placed beyond reach.<\/p>\n

V.8 What Twenty Years Means in Practice<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Strip away the doctrine and the practical point remains. Trademark law protects the reliance interests of the public and the investment interests of the mark holder. It does not exist to give an institution a permanent option, exercisable at any moment of its choosing, to destroy a critic it has tolerated for a generation.<\/p>\n

The Church had twenty years to object. It had a formal adjudication in 2015 in which objecting would have cost it nothing. It had a comprehensive rebranding in 2018 in which the topic was unavoidable. It said nothing, then said nothing, then said nothing again \u2014 and then, in the twenty-first year, sent a lawyer.<\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

VI. The Amici Arrive: Two Roads to the Same Conclusion<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

On August 7, 2026, two organizations with no stake in Mormonism and no history of defending its critics filed separate briefs in the District of Utah asking the court to throw this case out. Neither is a party. Neither had to appear. That they did so \u2014 and that they arrived at the same destination from different doctrinal directions \u2014 is the most significant development in the litigation since the complaint.<\/p>\n

VI.1 The ACLU of Utah: A Word Is Not a Brand<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The ACLU of Utah grounds its argument in trademark fair use, and it opens by placing the Church\u2019s demand alongside the company it would have to keep. Trademark law has never prevented a band from titling a song after the doll it mocks, or a filmmaker from naming a picture after the dancers his characters imitate, or a critic from registering a domain that consists of the criticized company\u2019s own name. The brief then asks the obvious question: why should a podcast about Mormon stories be the exception?<\/p>\n

Its central legal proposition is that the word never functioned as a brand at all:<\/p>\n

The word \u201cMormon\u201d is not a source identifier \u2026 an entire ethnoreligious culture and people.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 ACLU of Utah amicus curiae brief<\/strong>,<\/strong><\/span> filed Aug. 7, 2026, U.S. District Court for the District of Utah<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The brief then does the scholarly work required to make that assertion stick. It cites the Journal of Mormon History, whose subject matter is understood to encompass every tradition tracing its origins to Joseph Smith Jr. It cites Encyclopaedia Britannica, which distinguishes the LDS Church from other Mormon churches. It walks through the 1844 succession crisis and the denominations it produced \u2014 the Community of Christ, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Apostolic United Brethren, whose leaders describe themselves as Fundamentalist Mormons. And it notes that the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1946, described FLDS petitioners as members of a Mormon sect and compared them to other Mormons.<\/p>\n

The conclusion follows without strain. A word that names a religious movement of multiple denominations, an ethnic and cultural identity, an academic field, and a body of literature and entertainment \u2014 including television series with no institutional connection to the plaintiff \u2014 is not performing the function trademark law protects.<\/p>\n

\u2026 nominative and descriptive fair use \u2026 protected speech under the Lanham Act.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 ACLU of Utah brief<\/strong>,<\/strong><\/span> as reported by Amelia Hobson, ABC4 (KTVX), Aug. 11, 2026<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The brief closes with an argument that ought to trouble the Church more than it apparently does. The defendants\u2019 continued use of \u201cMormon,\u201d it says, is itself expressive \u2014 because they kept the word through the years when the Church was actively discouraging it and the term was unpopular. On that reading, the choice to say \u201cMormon\u201d in 2019, 2021, and 2023 was a statement about who owns the vocabulary of a religious tradition. Suing over it is not a defense of a brand. It is a response to a message.<\/p>\n

VI.2 The EFF: The Expense Is the Injury<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The Electronic Frontier Foundation arrives from a different direction. Its brief, prepared with attorneys at Ballard Spahr, urges the court to apply the First Amendment test articulated in Rogers v. Grimaldi \u2014 a framework adopted in many circuits, though not yet in this one, for cases where a mark is used within an expressive work rather than as a brand.<\/p>\n

The reason EFF wants that test is procedural, and it is the sharpest observation in either brief. Rogers permits meritless trademark claims against expression to be resolved early, before the ruinous phase of litigation begins. That timing is not a detail. It is the whole ballgame:<\/p>\n

Individuals who use trademarks to critique their owners are regularly subject to legal threats they cannot afford to litigate.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Electronic Frontier Foundation amicus curiae brief<\/strong>,<\/strong><\/span> filed Aug. 7, 2026, U.S. District Court for the District of Utah<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The brief supplies the numbers cited at the opening of this analysis \u2014 $250,000 to $1.1 million per party through trial and appeal, $100,000 to $375,000 through discovery and motion practice \u2014 and pairs them with a finding from the leading trademark treatise: that a recipient of a cease-and-desist letter, facing expensive litigation over vague standards, will usually capitulate rather than fight. It goes further, citing survey research in which practitioners acknowledged asserting claims they themselves believed weak, precisely because demand letters work, and acknowledged targeting small actors unlikely to have the resources to resist.<\/p>\n

That is the mechanism this essay opened with, described by the people who operate it. And it is why EFF asks not merely for dismissal but for dismissal now, with prejudice: because allowing the case into discovery imposes the punishment regardless of the verdict, and chills every other speaker watching.<\/p>\n

On the merits, EFF makes the genericness argument in its strongest form. Trademark claims built on generic terms are especially offensive to First Amendment principles because they permit one entity to control a common word for its common meaning \u2014 and the offense compounds when the word names a religious tradition. There is, the brief observes, no other term that accurately describes both members of the LDS Church and the broader community that traces itself to the Book of Mormon. Locking the word up therefore erects a barrier to criticism and commentary not only about the Church, but about groups the Church does not control.<\/p>\n

EFF also declines the Church\u2019s framing that this is an isolated brand dispute, characterizing the suit instead as the latest instance of a documented pattern \u2014 Mormon Match in 2014, the Mormon Mental Health Association in 2016, Mormon News Roundup in 2025. And it closes with a line borrowed from this same district that answers the Church\u2019s entire theory of the case: the Lanham Act regulates economic competition, not ideological or political competition.<\/p>\n

In its public commentary on the filing, EFF put the principle in one sentence:<\/p>\n

Trademark is supposed to be about helping consumers identify the sources \u2026 not controlling criticism.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Cara Gagliano, Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/strong>,<\/strong><\/span> Deeplinks Blog, Aug. 10, 2026<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The defendants summarized what unites the two briefs in a single sentence that will likely outlive this case:<\/p>\n

\u2026 no institution, however rich or powerful, should be allowed to weaponize trademark law \u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Mormon Stories \/ Open Stories Foundation<\/strong>, announcement of the amicus filings, Aug. 8, 2026<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

VII. When a Style Guide Becomes a Liability<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

The original version of this analysis argued that the most legally awkward document in the case is not anything Mormon Stories published. It is the plaintiff\u2019s own style guide. Nothing in the August filings has changed that assessment; the amicus briefs have simply confirmed it from the outside.<\/p>\n

The Church\u2019s Newsroom directs the public, the press, and its own membership away from the word it is now enforcing:<\/p>\n

\u2026 is not an authorized title, and the Church discourages its use.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Newsroom Style Guide<\/strong>, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on the nickname \u201cMormon\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a single clause, the plaintiff characterizes the contested term as an unauthorized nickname and asks the world to stop using it.<\/strong> <\/em><\/span>Trademark law rests on the proposition that a mark functions in the marketplace as an identifier of source. A mark whose owner has spent eight years publicly instructing the marketplace not to apply it has a credibility problem the moment it walks into court asking that the same word be policed.<\/p>\n

Defense counsel will offer the style guide, together with President Nelson\u2019s 2018 General Conference address, as a party-opponent admission under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2). This does not establish abandonment as a technical matter \u2014 statutory abandonment requires three consecutive years of non-use with intent not to resume, and the Church has continued to use several composite marks. But it goes directly to the strength of the mark and to likelihood of confusion, which are the questions that decide this case. If the senior user has spent nearly a decade telling the public the word does not designate it, an ordinary consumer encountering \u201cMormon Stories\u201d has less reason, not more, to assume official affiliation.<\/p>\n

The Church\u2019s best answer remains President Nelson\u2019s own qualification, offered to Latter-day Saints in Canada in the same season as the rebranding:<\/p>\n

We have to be careful to protect the name \u201cMormon.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 President Russell M. Nelson<\/strong>, address in Canada, August 2018, reported by Tad Walch, Deseret News<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read together, the style guide and the Nelson address describe a posture of selective retention: abandon the word as a self-designation, retain the legal right to police it in the hands of others. Whether that two-track strategy is coherent under trademark doctrine is precisely what the District of Utah must now decide. What can be said already is that it is not a posture the public was ever told about, and it is not the posture on which twenty years of third-party reliance was built.<\/p>\n

There is also the administrative record. The United States Patent and Trademark Office refused an application by the Church to register the bare word \u201cMormon\u201d for religious services, concluding that the term was understood as designating a kind of church rather than a source of services \u2014 comparable to \u201cPresbyterian\u201d or \u201cMethodist.\u201d The application was abandoned in 2007.<\/strong><\/em><\/span> That determination is not preclusive here, but it is powerfully persuasive on exactly the question the amici now press.<\/p>\n

The Electronic Frontier Foundation stated the underlying principle a decade ago, in a dispute with this same plaintiff:<\/p>\n

Trademark law does not give one company the right to control language.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/strong>, Not MORMON\u00ae, Still Mormon, February 2016<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

VIII. The Counts Reassessed<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

VIII.1 Trademark Infringement and Unfair Competition<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

This count is weak and getting weaker. Five defenses converge on it. Descriptive fair use under 15 U.S.C. \u00a7 1115(b)(4) applies because \u201cMormon Stories\u201d uses the word in its ordinary descriptive sense \u2014 stories about Mormons \u2014 and that defense is materially strengthened where the senior user has publicly disavowed the term as an authorized designation. Nominative fair use under New Kids on the Block v. News America Publishing permits use of a mark where the subject cannot be identified without it, and a podcast examining Mormonism cannot examine it anonymously. Genericness, supported by the USPTO\u2019s own refusal, attaches to \u201cMormon\u201d as applied to a tradition, a people, and their discourse. The equitable defenses of laches, acquiescence, and estoppel are addressed above and are, on this record, formidable. And the absence of competition between the parties drains the confusion factors of their force.<\/p>\n

The Church\u2019s strongest remaining trademark argument is narrow: that the specific post-2022 design stack \u2014 blue palette plus light-rays motif plus font treatment plus Christus imagery \u2014 crossed a line when assembled. That argument is respectable. It is also, by its own terms, an argument about design elements the defendants have already abandoned.<\/p>\n

VIII.2 Copyright Infringement<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Intellectual honesty requires saying plainly what the previous version of this analysis said: the copyright count is the Church\u2019s strongest claim, and it is meaningfully stronger than the trademark count. Officially commissioned photographs of the First Presidency and other Church imagery fall squarely within valid registrations. Their use in podcast thumbnails, banners, and promotional graphics states a prima facie case.<\/p>\n

The defense is fair use under 17 U.S.C. \u00a7 107, and it is a real defense rather than a reflexive one. The use is commentary, criticism, and journalism directed at the very institution depicted \u2014 the paradigm case for transformative purpose. Cutting the other way: the podcast generates revenue, the photographs are creative rather than purely factual, and entire images rather than excerpts were used.<\/p>\n

We believe our use \u2026 qualifies as fair use.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 John P. Dehlin<\/strong>, statement to Tad Walch, Deseret News, Aug. 20, 2026<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two facts materially improve the defendants\u2019 equitable position regardless of how the fair-use factors are scored. First, Brigham Young University\u2019s own Religious Studies Center has published scholarship acknowledging substantial latitude under fair use for educational and critical engagement with Church-copyrighted materials. Second, the defendants removed the identified images on request and committed not to use them going forward. Voluntary abatement does not erase past infringement, but it bears directly on injunctive relief, on statutory damages, and on any claim that this is an exceptional case warranting fees.<\/p>\n

VIII.3 The Demand for a Permanent Injunction<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Permanent injunctive relief requires the four-factor showing of eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C.: irreparable injury, inadequacy of legal remedies, a balance of hardships favoring the plaintiff, and \u2014 decisively here \u2014 the public interest.<\/p>\n

In a dispute over religious discourse, the public-interest factor carries unusual weight. An injunction barring a critical podcast from using the ordinary name of the tradition it examines does not merely restrict commerce; it approaches prior restraint on speech about a powerful institution. Federal courts in Lanham Act cases touching commentary have consistently tailored relief narrowly to the specific source-confusing element \u2014 a logo, a color, a specific image \u2014 rather than issuing the sweeping relief this complaint requests. That is the ceiling on realistic outcomes here, and the defendants have already climbed most of the way to it voluntarily.<\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

IX. What \u201cVexatious\u201d Would Actually Require \u2014 and What It Would Cost<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

This analysis opened with the word vexatious, and precision now demands that the word be defined rather than merely deployed.<\/p>\n

In American federal practice, there is no free-floating cause of action for filing an aggressive lawsuit. The relevant mechanisms are four, and each has a threshold.<\/p>\n

Rule 11<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 sanctions filings unsupported by any reasonable factual or legal basis. The Church\u2019s complaint is not that. It pleads registered marks, identifies specific images, and attaches exhibits. Whatever else may be said, this is not a Rule 11 case.<\/p>\n

28 U.S.C. \u00a7 1927<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n

Section 1927 reaches counsel who unreasonably and vexatiously multiply proceedings. It is directed at conduct during litigation rather than at the decision to sue, and it is applied sparingly. It would become relevant only if the plaintiff litigated the case in a manner disproportionate to its stakes \u2014 which is precisely what the EFF brief warns is the point of the exercise.<\/p>\n

Lanham Act \u00a7 35(a), 15 U.S.C. \u00a7 1117(a)<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n

This is the realistic vehicle. It permits a prevailing defendant to recover attorney\u2019s fees in exceptional cases, a standard read broadly since Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc. (2014) to reach cases that stand out from others in the substantive strength of a litigating position or the unreasonable manner in which they were litigated. Courts have awarded fees against trademark plaintiffs whose enforcement appeared aimed at speech rather than commerce, and particularly where prior toleration of the same use undercut the asserted likelihood of confusion. Both features are present here. If the motion to dismiss is granted, a fee application is not merely available \u2014 it is close to indicated.<\/p>\n

Malicious Prosecution<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n

This doctrine, invoked by some commentators, remains a dead end. It requires proof of a claim filed without probable cause, malice, failure of the claim, injury, and \u2014 fatally in most civil cases \u2014 arrest or seizure of property plus a special injury beyond the ordinary burdens of being sued. Trademark suits produce neither arrest nor seizure. The doctrine is not the answer here and should not be advanced as though it were.<\/p>\n

The honest conclusion is therefore twofold. The Church\u2019s complaint is not sanctionable, and no responsible analyst should say otherwise. But sanctionability is not the measure of whether litigation functions as harassment. A suit can be perfectly well pleaded and still operate as a machine for converting a critic\u2019s donations into legal fees. That is the phenomenon the EFF brief documents with survey data drawn from the practitioners who employ it, and it is the phenomenon a Rogers-style early exit exists to prevent.<\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

X. Conclusion: The Word Belongs to the People Who Carry It<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Where does this leave the case?<\/p>\n

On copyright, the Church retains a real claim, narrowed by voluntary compliance to a question of past use, modest damages, and a prospective bar on images the defendants have already withdrawn. On trademark, the Church\u2019s position has deteriorated markedly since April. It is now opposed by two national civil-liberties organizations arguing from independent doctrinal premises; it is contradicted on its own dates by its own filings; it is undercut by its own style guide, its own president\u2019s rebranding, and the USPTO\u2019s own refusal to register the bare term; and it must survive twenty years of silence that no borrowing period in American law can absorb.<\/p>\n

And on the public record \u2014 the record that outlasts dockets \u2014 the Church has already lost something it cannot recover by winning. It has spent eight years telling the world that \u201cMormon\u201d is not its name. It has now spent four months in federal court insisting that the word is nonetheless its property. Those two positions can be reconciled in a brief. They cannot be reconciled in the mind of an ordinary person watching, and the ordinary person watching is the entire universe of consumers whose confusion the Church claims to be protecting.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a principle that has organized American trademark jurisprudence for more than a century, and it applies with particular force to a word that names a people. The law protects marks insofar as they identify sources. It does not protect institutional control over the vocabulary of a religious tradition. Where those two purposes diverge, courts have consistently sided with the public\u2019s ability to speak about a tradition in the language the public actually uses.<\/p>\n

The word \u201cMormon\u201d was a slur before it was a badge, a badge before it was a brand, and a brand before it was renounced. It has been carried for two centuries by people the Church claims and by people the Church has expelled, by believers and by fundamentalists and by scholars and by novelists and by anyone who has ever tried to describe the thing honestly. That is not a trademark. That is a language. And no institution, however old, however wealthy, or however sincere, gets to take a language back from the people who speak it.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

Editorial Note<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

This analysis is offered as scholarly apologetics and public-interest legal commentary. It is not legal advice, and its author is not counsel to any party. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Intellectual Reserve, Inc. hold and are entitled to exercise legitimate intellectual-property interests; John P. Dehlin and the Open Stories Foundation are entitled to defend their work and their branding. The District of Utah will resolve these questions on a full factual record, and it may well resolve some of them differently than this analysis anticipates.<\/i><\/p>\n

Where the Church\u2019s position is strong \u2014 principally on copyright \u2014 this analysis says so plainly. Where its position is weak, this analysis says that plainly too. Readers who believe any characterization here is unfair to the plaintiff are invited to say so; corrections offered in good faith will be received in the same spirit.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014 The Righteous Cause<\/i><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

Sources and Further Reading<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Primary Filings and Institutional Statements<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, \u201cGetting It Right: Clarifying Trademark and Branding Concerns,\u201d Newsroom, April 17, 2026, updated August 20, 2026. https:\/\/newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org\/article\/getting-it-right-clarifying-trademark-branding-concerns<\/span>
\nNewsroom Style Guide, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https:\/\/newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org\/style-guide<\/span><\/span>
\nACLU of Utah, amicus curiae brief in support of defendants\u2019 motion to dismiss, filed August 7, 2026 (PDF). https:\/\/www.mormonstories.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/gov.uscourts.utd_.163775.65.1.pdf<\/span><\/span>
\nElectronic Frontier Foundation, amicus curiae brief, filed August 7, 2026 (PDF). https:\/\/www.eff.org\/files\/2026\/08\/10\/70_eff_amicus_brief_0.pdf<\/span><\/span>
\nOpen Stories Foundation, Motion to Dismiss with exhibits, filed June 22, 2026 (PDF). https:\/\/www.mormonstories.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-06-22no041-0-LDS-Church-v-Mormon-Stories-Motion-to-Dismiss-and-Exhibits.pdf<\/span><\/span>
\nOpen Stories Foundation, Answer and Counterclaims with exhibits, filed June 22, 2026 (PDF). https:\/\/www.mormonstories.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-06-22no042-0-LDS-Church-v-Mormon-Stories-Answer-and-Counterclaim-and-Exhibits.pdf<\/span><\/span>
\nMormon Stories, \u201cThe LDS Church Lawsuit Against Mormon Stories: Timeline, Court Filings & FAQ.\u201d https:\/\/www.mormonstories.org\/lds-church-lawsuit\/<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

News Coverage and Commentary<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Jeff Tavss, \u201cLDS Church argues against dismissing lawsuit filed against \u2018Mormon Stories\u2019 podcast,\u201d FOX 13 News Utah (KSTU), August 20, 2026. https:\/\/www.fox13now.com\/news\/local-news\/salt-lake-city\/lds-church-argues-against-dismissing-lawsuit-filed-against-mormon-stories-podcast<\/span><\/span>
\nTad Walch, \u201cChurch says trademark lawsuit is about eliminating confusion caused by podcaster,\u201d Deseret News, August 20, 2026. https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/faith\/2026\/08\/20\/church-says-trademark-lawsuit-is-about-eliminating-confusion-caused-by-podcaster\/<\/span><\/span>
\nAmelia Hobson, \u201cOrganizations file in support of \u2018Mormon Stories\u2019 podcast in trademark infringement lawsuit from LDS Church,\u201d ABC4 (KTVX), August 11, 2026. https:\/\/www.abc4.com\/news\/wasatch-front\/organizations-file-in-support-of-mormon-stories-podcast-in-trademark-infringement-lawsuit-from-lds-church\/<\/span><\/span>
\nABC4 (KTVX), \u201cChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints speaks on legal action against \u2018Mormon Stories\u2019 podcast,\u201d August 2026. https:\/\/www.abc4.com\/news\/wasatch-front\/lds-church-mormon-stories-lawsuit\/<\/span><\/span>
\nJohn Dehlin, \u201cACLU and EFF File Amicus Briefs in Support of Mormon Stories Podcast and Free Speech,\u201d Mormon Stories, August 8, 2026. https:\/\/www.mormonstories.org\/aclu-and-eff-file-amicus-briefs-in-support-of-mormon-stories-podcast-and-free-speech\/<\/span><\/span>
\nCara Gagliano, \u201cDismiss Church\u2019s Trademark Lawsuit Against \u2018Mormon Stories\u2019 Podcast, EFF Urges Court,\u201d Electronic Frontier Foundation Deeplinks, August 10, 2026. https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2026\/08\/dismiss-churchs-trademark-lawsuit-against-mormon-stories-podcast-eff-urges-court<\/span><\/span>
\nEmily Poler, \u201cHow the LDS Church\u2019s Lawsuit Over \u2018Mormon\u2019 Could Bite Back,\u201d LinkedIn, 2026 \u2014 a litigator\u2019s assessment of the reputational and doctrinal blowback risk the suit creates for the plaintiff. https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/how-lds-church-lawsuit-over-mormon-could-bite-back-emily-poler-emfef<\/span><\/span>
\nr\/mormon, \u201cThe Church disproved its own argument in its own filing\u201d \u2014 community analysis of the August 20 opposition brief and the 2016\/2022 date conflict. https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/mormon\/comments\/1vu3n10\/the_church_disproved_its_own_argument_in_its\/<\/span><\/span>
\nSalon, \u201cMormons will regret suing an ex-member,\u201d April 29, 2026. https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2026\/04\/29\/mormons-will-regret-suing-an-ex-member\/<\/span><\/span>
\nSlate, \u201cThe LDS Church Is Suing One of Its Most Vocal Critics for a Seemingly Silly Reason,\u201d May 2026 \u2014 source for Dehlin\u2019s account of the mediation demands. https:\/\/slate.com\/life\/2026\/05\/mormon-stories-church-lds-lawsuit-trademark.html<\/span><\/span>
\nBrittany Ratelle, \u201cAnalysis: The Church of Jesus Christ isn\u2019t suing Mormon Stories over the word \u2018Mormon,\u2019\u201d Deseret News, April 23, 2026. https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/opinion\/2026\/04\/23\/mormon-stories-lawsuit\/<\/span><\/span>
\nTad Walch, \u201cWe\u2019re correcting a name: President Russell M. Nelson tells Latter-day Saints in Canada,\u201d Deseret News, August 19, 2018. https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/2018\/8\/19\/20651519\/we-re-correcting-a-name-president-russell-m-nelson-tells-latter-day-saints-in-canada\/<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Background and Doctrinal Sources<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Electronic Frontier Foundation, \u201cNot MORMON\u00ae, Still Mormon,\u201d February 2016. https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2016\/02\/not-mormonr-still-mormon<\/span><\/span>
\n\u201cMormon (word)\u201d \u2014 history of the term, the 1990 Hinckley address, and the USPTO refusal and 2007 abandonment. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mormon_(word)<\/span><\/span>
\nBrigham Young University Religious Studies Center, \u201c\u2018We Believe in Being Honest\u2019: Using Church Copyrighted Materials.\u201d https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240422201108\/https:\/\/rsc.byu.edu\/vol-6-no-3-2005\/we-believe-being-honest-using-church-copyrighted-materials<\/span><\/span>
\n\u201cWhen a Style Guide Becomes a Liability: The LDS Church\u2019s Own Words in the Mormon Stories Case,\u201d The Righteous Cause, April 27, 2026 \u2014 the earlier edition superseded by this analysis. https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/2026\/04\/27\/when-a-style-guide-becomes-a-liability-the-lds-churchs-own-words-in-the-mormon-stories-case\/<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cases and Authorities Cited<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Rogers v. Grimaldi, 875 F.2d 994 (2d Cir. 1989) \u2022 Radiance Foundation, Inc. v. NAACP, 786 F.3d 316 (4th Cir. 2015) \u2022 New Kids on the Block v. News America Publishing, Inc., 971 F.2d 302 (9th Cir. 1992) \u2022 KP Permanent Make-Up, Inc. v. Lasting Impression I, Inc., 543 U.S. 111 (2004) \u2022 Park \u2019N Fly, Inc. v. Dollar Park & Fly, Inc., 469 U.S. 189 (1985) \u2022 eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006) \u2022 Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., 572 U.S. 545 (2014) \u2022 Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. \u00a7\u00a7 1114, 1115(b)(4), 1117(a) \u2022 17 U.S.C. \u00a7 107 \u2022 Fed. R. Civ. P. 11 \u2022 28 U.S.C. \u00a7 1927 \u2022 Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2766 \u2756 \u2766<\/span><\/p>\n

A Note on Research Methods and Accuracy<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

In recent years, some have voiced concern that artificial intelligence may distort facts or introduce inaccuracies into serious research. That criticism deserves acknowledgment. However, AI has now evolved into the most powerful research instrument available to any dedicated scholar\u2014capable of analyzing vast datasets, cross\u2011referencing historical records, and surfacing overlooked connections across sources. This work represents a collaboration between the author\u2019s investigative inquiry, verified primary documentation, and the advanced analytic capabilities of AI research tools. Here, AI was not used as a ghostwriter or a shortcut for scholarship, but as a disciplined research partner devoted to rigor, accuracy, and transparency.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Every factual claim in this work has been subjected to active verification. Where AI\u2011generated content was used as a starting point, it was tested against primary sources, peer\u2011reviewed scholarship, official institutional documentation, and established historical records. Where discrepancies were found\u2014and they were found\u2014corrections were made. The author has made every reasonable effort to ensure that quotations are accurately attributed, historical details are precisely rendered, and theological claims fairly represent the positions they describe or critique.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

That said, no work of this scope is immune to error, and the author has no interest in perpetuating inaccuracies in the service of an argument. If you are a reader\u2014whether sympathetic, skeptical, or hostile to the conclusions drawn here\u2014and you identify a factual error, a misattributed source, a misrepresented teaching, or a claim that cannot be substantiated, you are warmly and genuinely invited to say so. Reach out. The goal of this work is not to win a debate but to get the history right. Corrections offered in good faith will be received in the same spirit, and verified corrections will be incorporated into future editions without hesitation.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Truth, after all, has nothing to fear from scrutiny\u2014and neither does this work.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: An AI-generated image imagines a group of handsomely dressed lawyers frantically digging a hole near an LDS temple to find archeological evidence against brand infringement. Friends of John Dehlin Want to Know. Furthermore, Was The Lawsuit Obtained By Revelation? Twenty Years of Silence, the Manufacture of \u201cConfusion,\u201d and the LDS Church\u2019s Case Against Mormon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[44,45,238],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latter-day-saints","category-mormonism","category-mormons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Gemini_Generated_Image_wkesj5wkesj5wkes.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8722"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8724,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8722\/revisions\/8724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}