It's doubtful many hockey fans looking for tickets to a Mighty Ducks game in Anaheim, Calif., somehow would confuse the team with Mighty Ducts Inc., air cleaning specialists in Northeast Ohio. Walt Disney Co., the team's owner, thought otherwise. In August 1999, Patrick T. Fraser, owner of Mighty Ducts in Oakwood Village, received a letter from NHL Enterprises LP charging Mighty Ducts with violating and exploiting the National Hockey League team's property rights. The letter, which ended with a threat to sue, began a three-year contest between Mr. Fraser and NHL Enterprises, the league's marketing and licensing agency. 'The letter made me nervous at the time,' Mr. Fraser said. 'We were a small company, smaller than we are now, and I knew they could squash us in a heartbeat with legal fees.' The NHL is no stranger to the name game. Less than a year after the league made contact with the Mighty Ducts, the Canadian Wildlife Federation filed a motion with the Canadian Trademarks Office reasserting its right to the word 'wild' after the NHL filed suit on behalf of the NHL team, the Minnesota Wild. The Canadian Wildlife Federation has a 13,000-circulation children's magazine called 'Wild' for which the federation received a Canadian trademark on the word 'wild' in 1999. Likewise, Mr. Fraser registered Mighty Ducts' name and applied for a business license with the state of Ohio when he founded the company in 1995. He liked the play on words and his logo - a duck with an attitude - ducks being a common symbol in the air duct-cleaning industry. With his business and reputation growing, Mr. Fraser subsequently applied for a federal trademark. 'Apparently NHL Enterprises monitors trademark applications and is very aggressive in protecting their property rights,' Mr. Fraser said. So, Mr. Fraser consulted with an attorney who warned that NHL Enterprises had deeper pockets than Mighty Ducts did. 'I got hotblooded over it and didn't want to change anything,' Mr. Fraser said. 'I had a little success, but not enough to cover $50,000 in legal fees. I didn't want to send my employees into the street over this. But it wasn't as though anyone had called our office looking for season tickets either. I thought if we didn't do anything, they would forget about us.' But NHL Enterprises didn't forget. Bernadette Mansur, an NHL spokeswoman, said trademarks require an enormous investment by the owner, and Disney was seeking to protect its investment. After weighing the pros and cons, Mr. Fraser withdrew the federal trademark application. 'I thought I had done enough,' he said. 'We were getting a good reputation for cleaning air ducts and I wanted to keep the name in Northeast Ohio.' But NHL Enterprises disagreed. Mr. Fraser subsequently received a series of letters charging Mighty Ducts with brand infringement and diluting the NHL's trademark value. So, a Mighty Ducts employee suggested adding the word 'air' into the company's title, the NHL lawyers agreed, and Mighty Air Ducts was born. In June 2002, he changed his company's name, stationery, truck signs and web site address. At first, NHL Enterprises accepted the compromise but not for long. The letters continued. In a letter dated July 15, 2002, Michael H. Gold, staff attorney for NHL Enterprises wrote: 'Our latest check of your web site indicates that you have adopted and begun using the domain name mightyairducts.com. Now that mightyairducts.com is active, you should immediately disable mightyducts.com and allow the domain name to expire.' Mr. Gold did not return two calls from Crain's Cleveland Business. Mr. Fraser, who linked the www.mightyducts.com web site to the www.mightyairducts.com address, said after leasing the Mighty Ducts domain name, he wanted to protect his investment. The parties agreed to revisit the issue when the lease expires in nine years. 'While I thought the situation was frivolous, in the end we folded our tent with honor and dignity, and maintained our business without any drastic changes,' Mr. Fraser said.