The shutters - as well as signs, packages, labels, videos, advertisements and other materials with the elk image - are being destroyed under a court order in a trademark infringement case.

Upstream Images, a Draper logo design company, alleged in a 2007 lawsuit that Utah developer Troy Naylor and Pebble Creek Homes were misappropriating its elk image at the upscale Cottages at Canyon View.

In late October, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson agreed that the defendants were liable for trademark and copyright infringement.

The judge issued a permanent injunction barring Naylor, Pebble Creek Homes and Canyon View Development from imitating or using Upstream Images' elk depiction. In addition, he ordered that all products with the elk image and the plates and mold to make the products be delivered for destruction.

Benson also awarded $50,000 in damages and $30,000 in attorneys' fees to Upstream Images and Michael Houmand, the company's owner and the creator of the elk image.

Houmand describes the elk depiction as one of the most famous outdoor images in the United States. That image, created in 2000, became one of his best-selling works for more than three years, he says.

Then, during a fall 2006 snowmobiling trip near Midway in Wasatch County, he recognized his elk on a number of signs advertising the Cottages at Canyon View and on window shutters, according to Houmand.

He says he later found the image being used by Naylor on his Web site, in advertising brochures, on an advertising video and on trucks, uniforms and shirts.

After failing to reach an out-of-court resolution, Upstream Images filed suit in 2007 in U.S. District Court. Also included as defendants were 30 unidentified homeowners in the Pebble Creek development who allegedly had the elk image on their shutters.

Houmand has alleged in an affidavit that Naylor admitted purchasing the image from a sporting goods store and copying it. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Naylor responded that he had not misappropriated the elk image.

Naylor, whose lawyers withdrew from the case in November 2007, could not be reached for comment about the injunction.

The elk image on his Web site, cottagesatcanyonview.com, was removed in June and replaced by another elk image, according to Gregory Phillips, the lawyer for Upstream Images and Houmand. However, the site still showed pictures of homes with the elk shutters at the time the injunction was issued, he said.

pmanson@sltrib.com