By Jason Blevins
Denver Post Staff Writer

Denver investor Philip Anschutz is staking his claim on the name “The Examiner.”

The nascent newspaper publisher has filed 127 U.S. applications to trademark general circulation newspapers with “The Examiner” name in 69 cities, including Denver.

Clarity Media Group spent tens of thousands of dollars on the applications, based on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s $335 filing fee.

Anschutz spokesman Jim Monaghan said the applications are meant to protect the name of the San Francisco paper.

“It was a prudent business move to protect The Examiner trademark broadly,” Monaghan said. “We don’t want to talk about our business strategy. But things are going very well in San Francisco, and it seemed prudent to protect the value of the trademark.”

Anschutz, the founder of Qwest Communications International who ranks 33rd among Forbes’ richest 400 Americans with a net worth of $5.2 billion, purchased the five-day-a-week San Francisco Examiner and two weekly newspapers in February. In September, he bought three papers near Washington. . Clarity Media Group is headed by former Denver Post executives Ryan McKibben and Frederick Anderson.

As Anschutz’s newspaper group established roots on both coasts, Clarity quietly applied to broadly trademark “The Examiner” name. Once the flagship of William Randolph Hearst’s 28-newspaper, 18-magazine media empire, the San Francisco Examiner had devolved into a thin free weekday paper.

Other cities where Clarity sought trademarks include Long Island, N.Y.; Des Moines, Iowa; Detroit; Kansas City, Mo.; ; New Orleans; Phoenix; Salt Lake City; and Boston.

Lynn Parker Hendrix of the Denver law firm Holme Roberts & Owen made the filings for Clarity.

Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.

(c) 2004, The Denver Post