LaBelle Lake Ice Palace fighting lawsuit, shut down
The LaBelle Lake Ice Palace has become a popular wintertime attraction in Eastern Idaho. But a company out of Utah, called Ice Castles, is trying to shut it down. The LaBelle Lake Ice Palace owners spoke to the owner of Ice Castles prior to their grand opening last year and, other than a name change, got the OK and were told good luck. However, on opening day, LaBelle Lake Ice Palace owners got a cease and desist letter from Ice Castles claiming patent infringement.
“Originally we were like, OK, we’ll shut down immediately if we’re actually infringing on your patent,” said Kira Martin, co-founder of LaBelle Lake Ice Palace. “We looked into it. Their patent is completely different than ours.”
After several warnings, Ice Castles is officially suing LaBelle Lake Ice Palace for patent infringement. However, LaBelle Lake Ice Palace owners say their systems are completely different. Ice Castles has a patent for freezing icicles together, but the LaBelle Lake Ice Palace uses ice logs.
“They do harvest icicles,” said Jim Youngstrom, owner of LaBelle Lake Ice Palace. “They bring them in and they attach one icicles to another icicles to another icicle. And then they drape water over it and that creates their ice castles. We have a whole different system. Our system involved ice logs. So we have a variety of sizes of ice logs. They’re symmetrical, so much easier to work with and we can start it 8, 9, 10 feet high as we put these pillars together and then we’ll let Mother Nature take over when we coat it with water.”
Ice Castles is also suing for damages saying it is losing customers at its Midway, Utah, location now that LaBelle Lake Ice Palace is open. Ice Castles has six locations, while LaBelle Lake Ice Palace only operates in Rigby.
“A big company from another state is coming in and trying to put us out of business,” Youngrom said. “And they’re not going to replace us by any means, they just want to put us out of business, that’s their goal.”
LaBelle Lake Ice Palace plans to fight the lawsuit and started a GoFundMe to help cover legal fees. They say if they win the lawsuit, they will build the most amazing ice palace next year.
“If we were doing something wrong then absolutely. But since we aren’t infringing, they shouldn’t be coming after us,” Martin said. “They should let us do this so the people of East Idaho can see this and come to this winter wonderland and really enjoy Idaho winters.”
You can find the LaBelle Lake Ice Palace GoFundMe page here.
