How Trademark Ruined Colorado-Style Pizza

from the ownership-is-not-value-creation dept

You’ve heard of New York style, Chicago deep dish, Detroit square pans. But Colorado-style pizza? Probably not. And there’s a perfectly ridiculous reason why this regional style never spread beyond a handful of restaurants in the Rocky Mountains: one guy trademarked it and scared everyone else away from making it.

This story comes via a fascinating Sporkful podcast episode where reporter Paul Karolyi spent years investigating why Colorado-style pizza remains trapped in obscurity while other regional styles became national phenomena.

The whole episode is worth listening to for the detective work alone, but the trademark angle reveals something important about how intellectual property thinking can strangle cultural movements in their cradle.

Here’s the thing about pizza “styles”: they become styles precisely because they spread. New York, Chicago, Detroit, New Haven—these aren’t just individual restaurant concepts, they’re cultural phenomena adopted and adapted by hundreds of restaurants. That widespread adoption creates the network effects that make a “style” valuable: customers seek it out, restaurants compete to perfect it, food writers chronicle its evolution.

Colorado-style pizza never got that chance. When Karolyi dug into why, he discovered that Beau Jo’s—the restaurant credited with inventing the style—had locked it up legally. When he asked the owner’s daughter if other restaurants were making Colorado-style pizza, her response was telling:

We’re um a trademark, so they cannot.

Really?

Yes.

Beau owns a trademark for Colorado style pizza.

Yep.

When Karolyi finally tracked down the actual owner, Chip (after years of trying, which is its own fascinating subplot), he expected to hear about some grand strategic vision behind the trademark. Instead, he got a masterclass in reflexive IP hoarding:

Cuz it’s different and nobody else is doing that. So, why not do it Colorado style? I mean, there’s Chicago style and there’s Pittsburgh style and Detroit and everything else. Um, and we were doing something that was what was definitely different and um um licensing attorney said, “Yeah, we can do it” and we were able to.

That’s it. No business plan. No licensing strategy. Just “some lawyer said we can do it” so they did. This is the IP-industrial complex in microcosm: lawyers selling trademark applications because they can, not because they should.

I pressed my case to Chip that abandoning the trademark so others could also use it could actually be good for his business.

“If more places made Colorado style pizza, the style itself would become more famous, which would make more people come to Beau Jo’s to try the original. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, like everyone would know that Beau Jo was the originator. Like, do you ever worry or maybe do you think that the trademark has possibly hindered the spread of this style of pizza that you created that you should be getting credit for?”

“Never thought about it.”

“Well, what do you think about it now?”

“I don’t know. I have to think about that. It’s an interesting thought. I’ve never thought about it. I’m going to look into it. I’m going to look into it. I’m going to talk to some people and um I’m not totally opposed to it. I don’t know that it would be a good idea for us, but I’m willing to look at it.”

A few weeks later, Karolyi followed up with Chip. Predictably, the business advisors had circled the wagons. They “unanimously” told him not to give up the trademark—because of course they did. These are the same people who profit from maintaining artificial scarcity, even when it demonstrably hurts the very thing they’re supposedly protecting.

And so Colorado-style pizza remains trapped in its legal cage, known only to a handful of tourists who stumble across Beau Jo’s locations. A culinary innovation that could have sparked a movement instead became a cautionary tale about how IP maximalism kills the things it claims to protect.

This case perfectly illustrates the perverse incentives of modern IP thinking. We’ve created an entire industry of lawyers and consultants whose job is to convince business owners to “protect everything” on the off chance they might license it later. Never mind that this protection often destroys the very value they’re trying to capture.

The trademark didn’t just fail to help Beau Jo’s—it actively harmed them. As Karolyi documents in the podcast, the legal lockup has demonstrably scared off other restaurateurs from experimenting with Colorado-style pizza, ensuring the “style” remains a curiosity rather than a movement. Fewer competitors means less innovation, less media attention, and fewer customers seeking out “the original.” It’s a masterclass in how to turn potential network effects into network defects.

Compare this to the sriracha success story. David Tran of Huy Fong Foods deliberately avoided trademarking “sriracha” early on, allowing dozens of competitors to enter the market. The result? Sriracha became a cultural phenomenon, and Huy Fong’s distinctive rooster bottle became the most recognizable brand in a category they helped create. Even as IP lawyers kept circling, Tran understood what Chip apparently doesn’t:

“Everyone wants to jump in now,” said Tran, 70. “We have lawyers come and say ‘I can represent you and sue’ and I say ‘No. Let them do it.’” Tran is so proud of the condiment’s popularity that he maintains a daily ritual of searching the Internet for the latest Sriracha spinoff.

Sometimes the best way to protect your creation is to let it go. But decades of IP maximalist indoctrination have made this counterintuitive wisdom almost impossible to hear. Even when presented with a clear roadmap for how abandoning the trademark could grow his business, Chip couldn’t break free from the sunk-cost fallacy and his advisors’ self-interested counsel.

The real tragedy isn’t just that Colorado-style pizza remains obscure. It’s that this story plays out thousands of times across industries, with creators choosing artificial scarcity over organic growth, protection over proliferation. Every time someone trademarks a taco style or patents an obvious business method, they’re making the same mistake Chip made: confusing ownership with value creation.

Filed Under: colorado style pizza, pizza, trademark

Companies: beau jo’s