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The "Mormon" Trademark is About to Expire

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By Mason

 The request for Mormon Stories to rebrand has spread quickly through Mormon spaces. Followers learned that the LDS Church had reached out with claims that the podcast was infringing on the “Mormon” trademark. The demand leaned on the legal idea that the Church owns the word. 

The request was shared on social media by @mormstories, but those posts seem to have been removed. Fortunately, copies of the email were shared on reddit.



But there is a significant detail sitting behind this entire dispute. The Church will have to renew the "Mormon" trademark in the 2026 to 2027 window. 




When that time comes, they must prove that they still use the word “Mormon” in active commerce. USPTO rules are clear on this point. A trademark only survives if the owner can show that it is still printed on actual goods or services that are still being sold or distributed. The official guidelines spell it out at uspto.gov under “Keeping your registration alive.”


Here is the tension. For years the Church has tried to distance itself from the word. Leaders asked members to stop using Mormon as a label. The Church rebranded its websites. It retired the phrase Mormon Messages. It scrubbed the word from manuals. The public campaign insisted that Mormon was inaccurate, misleading, and spiritually harmful. 


In daily speech, materials, and media, the Church’s official line is that it does not want to be known as Mormon. But in the legal arena, the institution now argues that use of the word by others violates its trademark rights.


The problem is that trademark law rewards consistent use. The USPTO requires renewal evidence in specific windows. Owners must file a Section 8 declaration between years 9 and 10 and again every 10 years after that. That filing must include a specimen, which is a real example of the mark as it appears on goods or services today. If they cannot show use at all, the registration is cancelled. 



Source: USPTO “Keeping your registration alive.”


This puts the Mormon Stories situation in an position. The Church claims strong and enforceable rights over a term it publicly rejects. Yet the moment they accuse someone else of using the word, they highlight the very question they will have to answer starting in 2026. 


Update (12/09/25)

Wouldn't publishing The Book of  Mormon fulfill this requirement of continued use?

The USPTO allows the public to access the specimens that have been submitted over the years to prove use of the trademark. Those can be found here under "documents". In none of the filings has the church used The Book of Mormon. Here is what they have used instead:


The Mormon Messages For Youth page on LDS.org (No longer in use)


The Mormon Messages For Youth YouTube Channel (No longer in use)


Mormon Genealogy on family search (seems to have ben renamed ("Latter-day Saint Online Genealogy Records")



Signs at many church buildings and historic sites used to display "The Mormons" in parenthesis. But this practice is now strictly against the church style guide


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Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 8, 2025 at 3:06 PM


    So this wasnt an issue for the last ~20 years that Mormon Stories has been around? Astonishing timing

    ReplyDelete
  2. MORMON COURTDecember 8, 2025 at 11:05 PM

    They still print Mormon on the book of mormon and distribute it

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MasonDecember 9, 2025 at 4:10 PM

      I updated the end of the article to address this.

      Delete

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