Montanans and entrepreneur fight over "The Last Best Place"

GREENOUGH, Mont. — Rich guys have come West to shop. They have bought ranches with soul-stirring scenery and settled in, usually for a few weeks a year, to savor what Montanans proudly call "The Last Best Place."

David Letterman has done it, as have Ted Turner, Tom Brokaw and thousands of non-celebrities. These high-net-worth interlopers have raised eyebrows and land values, but for the most part they have not raised hackles — until this summer.

That's when word got out that David Lipson, a multimillionaire entrepreneur, was not content with merely owning a spread in Montana. He wants to trademark "The Last Best Place."

If Lipson has his way — and six of his applications have been all but granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office — his various companies would have exclusive commercial use of "The Last Best Place" as a brand name. The phrase could be used to sell anything: real estate, footwear, maybe a fruit drink.

"It is a normal business practice," Lipson said at his 37,000-acre ranch, Paws Up, in the Blackfoot Valley. "You trademark your brands."

Lipson said he would not try to prevent Montana from using "The Last Best Place" to promote tourism and merely was seeking to protect his business interests from trademark infringement.

"We were amazed that all the rights to 'The Last Best Place' hadn't been trademarked," he said. "It was shocking."

Shock — together with shoot-that-varmint anger — is what many Montanans experienced when they heard about Lipson's effort to lock up commercial use of a wildly popular slogan he did not invent.

"We just don't like big shots coming from someplace else and claiming they own something they don't," said Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a rancher and the first Democratic governor of Montana since 1988. "Who is he? The Wizard of Oz? We don't think he is the Wizard of Oz, and I sure as hell ain't the scarecrow!"

Lipson, who was once chairman of Frederick's of Hollywood, a lingerie company, has taken a pounding this summer. Local newspapers keep mentioning the $2.8 million fine he was ordered to pay in 2001 to resolve a Securities and Exchange Commission charge of insider trading in a case involving Supercuts, the nationwide haircut chain of which he was chief executive in the mid-1990s.

Articles also note that a contractor has sued Lipson for allegedly not paying bills for work done at his ranch. Lipson generated more headlines in July, when he was fined a record $210,000 by the state for opening a high-end guest resort at his ranch without proper licenses for water.

Touching a nerve

These public-relations problems pale, however, in comparison with the populist rage he ignited with his maneuvers to corner the market on "The Last Best Place."

The phrase was coined by well-known writer William Kittredge as the title for an anthology of stories, poems and memoirs about Montana that was published at public expense to celebrate the state's centennial. Kittredge co-edited the book with his longtime companion, writer Annick Smith.

In an interview, they recalled being "in a tizzy" at a 1987 editorial meeting when they couldn't come up with a title for the book. Then Kittredge had an epiphany, which may have been helped by the gin-and-tonic he was drinking: He melded a line from a Richard Hugo poem about "the last good kiss" with Abraham Lincoln's definition of the United States as "the last best hope of mankind."

The title "The Last Best Place" helped transform a 1,158-page commemoration into what has become an essential volume on the West that still sells in regional bookstores.

More importantly, the phrase resonates with Montanans, capturing their love for the vast but thinly populated state, a place where hardship goes hand-in-glove with happiness and long bouts of bad weather are the price of living on a wondrous landscape.

"People are proud of themselves for living here," Kittredge said. " 'The Last Best Place' captures that."

Montana's lone U.S. House member, Rep. Dennis Rehberg, a Republican, is putting together a petition from state residents to be presented to the trademark office.

"This has definitely touched a nerve," said Erik Iverson, Rehberg's chief of staff.

That nerve is connected to the mythology that Montanans carry in their hearts, Smith said. "This guy has managed to hit us in the story of who we are," she said. "Being a Montanan is all about subscribing to a shared myth. People here feel like they have an ownership claim to 'The Last Best Place,' and now this guy is taking it away."

Doing damage control

Although Lipson is taking a high-decibel pasting, a number of other myths about Montana and the entire Rocky Mountain West are being quietly undermined by a growing invasion of affluent outsiders.

Historically, mining, timber, railroads, ranching and energy extraction dominated the region. Now it's dominated by the spending of retirees, said Peter Morton, senior resource economist in the Denver office of The Wilderness Society. He cites 2003 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis showing that retirement and investment income accounted for 35 percent of total personal income in Montana and 28 percent across the Rocky Mountain region.

"If it was an industry, retirees and folks moving here for quality of life would be the No. 1 industry in these states," Morton said.

Lipson, 67, bought his ranch eight years ago and said he spends one-third of his time in Montana, one-third on the road and one-third in Las Vegas, where he maintains his legal residence. He had hoped profits from raising Black Angus breeding bulls would pay for upkeep on the ranch, Lipson said.

When it didn't, he and his wife, Nadine, opened a small, exclusive guest operation. Lipson's attorneys are trying to increase the ranch's revenue stream by securing eight trademarks for "The Last Best Place."

Lipson is attempting to do public-relations damage control. He said he promised Schweitzer last month that his trademarks never would interfere with any state use of the phrase, but he reserved the right to challenge use of the phrase by commercial competitors.

Schweitzer has a different recollection: "I don't know if it was a promise, but when he walked out of here, he agreed he had no intention of having sole right to using 'Last Best Place.' "

Lipson also said the news media, politicians and the public have ignored an important fact: His companies are not the first or even the second corporate entities to trademark "The Last Best Place."

He bought two such trademarks for a clothing catalog and a line of jewelry from a company in California, which had bought them from a woman in Ohio, Lipson said.

A trademark lawyer hired by Montana, Robert Griffin, said trademark records show that Lipson apparently purchased those trademarks but added that Lipson is reaching wildly beyond those two narrow categories.

"It is one thing to call yourself the Last Best Place Catalogue; it is quite another to try to wrap up the term for anything in Montana, from real estate to travel service," Griffin said.

The governor is more blunt.

"I don't think anybody has a right to 'The Last Best Place,' " Schweitzer said. "That's a right that belongs to the people of Montana. What's next? Will someone try to acquire sole rights to the Missouri River?"