By Jake Dye

Special to the Homer Independent Press

The Homer Chamber of Commerce will be unable to distribute the bulk of its 2026 visitor guides until an advertisement is replaced or the guides are reprinted, under a preliminary injunction granted Monday by Superior Court Judge Bride Seifert. 

At question is a full-page ad by Lakeshore Lodging, which features an image alleged to be an “iconic” photograph representing Land’s End Resort. The photo depicts the facades of a set of condominiums overlooking Kachemak Bay with a sailboat and mountains in the background. The image is used in ads for both Land’s End Resort and Lakeshore Lodging in this year’s Homer Chamber of Commerce Visitor’s Guide.

Land’s End co-founder Jon Faulkner sued the chamber, Lakeshore Lodging and its manager Jim Anderson in March and called for distribution of this year’s visitor’s guide to be blocked. 

The 92-page guide is an annual publication distributed around the state and beyond in a major effort by the Homer Chamber of Commerce to market Homer to potential visitors.

Judge Seifert initially declined to prevent the chamber from distributing the 50,000 copies of the guide. To date, around 10,000 have been distributed, while around 25,000 are stored in Homer and an additional 13,000 are in Anchorage. After a court hearing on Thursday, Seifert ruled Monday that the chamber must recall the remaining copies from a warehouse in Anchorage and cease distribution of copies held on hand in Homer. She allowed circulation of a small number of copies — roughly 1,200 or fewer — “to satisfy immediate need.”

Before remaining copies of the guide can be distributed, Seifert’s decision reads, they must be “physically altered and corrected by adhering a replacement advertisement” over Lakeshore Lodging’s advertisement. The chamber may alternatively decide to simply reprint the remaining guides.

The cost for either replacing the ad or reprinting the guide will be split evenly between the chamber, Lakeshore Lodge and Land’s End Resort, the decision reads. No cost estimate has been entered in the record.

Brad Anderson, executive director of the chamber and unrelated to Jim, said Tuesday that the chamber appreciates the guidance provided in the ruling as well as the court’s quick turnaround in the matter.

“The Chamber is committed to following the order and working together with the other parties to carry it out,” he wrote in an email. “Our focus remains on supporting Homer’s businesses and ensuring a strong summer season for both our members and visitors. We’re optimistic that, with cooperation, this can be resolved promptly and that things can keep moving forward for the community.”

An attorney for Faulkner did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

At the hearing on Thursday, Faulkner said that the image used both in his own ad in this year’s visitor’s guide and that of Lakeshore Lodge, was taken in 2006 and used repeatedly in Land’s End marketing efforts since 2010.

“It’s essentially attached to every single ad — or if not every single one, a substantial number of them,” he said. “You can see it in our brochure, you can see it in our rack cards, you can see it in our print media, you can see it in our television ads. It’s everywhere. For all intents and purposes it is our brand, it is our trademark, it is our name, it is our image … it’s essentially synonymous with the name Land’s End.”

Use of the image by another business with a competing product in a competing marketplace, Faulkner said, is “quite apparently confusing.”

Lakeshore Lodging owns 12 condos in the beachfront development built originally by Land’s End and rents them out along with other Homer units owned by its holding company, AKRE. Among the condos now owned by Lakeshore Lodging is the yellow structure shown in the photos in both ads. 

Rebecca Hozubin, an attorney for Lakeshore Lodgings and Jim Anderson, said during the hearing that Faulkner had failed to prove “irreparable harm,” only speculating that harm may be caused to his business — while she said preventing the publication of the guide could harm other businesses and the chamber. She also claimed that because the image wasn’t watermarked or registered that it could be considered to be held in the public domain.

 

Since Faulkner filed suit on March 17, a series of hearings have centered on the nuances of trademark law and local advertising campaigns. Seifert’s decision this week followed one hearing that stretched for more than four hours as attorneys called witnesses and presented their case on Faulkner’s motion for injunction and a competing motion for dismissal. 

One witness called Thursday was the woman who designed the Lakeshore Lodging ad that includes the image. She said she was unaware that the photo was connected to Land’s End and saw it first in a planning meeting with Lakeshore Lodging leadership where it had been provided by Jim Anderson. She said a goal of the advertisement was to showcase their property without depicting Land’s End Resort, which isn’t in the photo. 

Faulkner said he never needed permission to use the photo, even if and when it depicted properties he no longer owned. 

A witness brought by Faukner’s attorney — who operates an advertising agency and testified that he’s worked with Land’s End to develop their brand — said that while the image doesn’t depict Land’s End Resort, it has been historically used to set the scene and help potential guests envision the experience they may have. 

Brad Anderson, the chamber director, said during the hearing that the concern of the chamber is 30 other advertisers featured in the guide being impacted by a halt in circulation at a “key season” where the guides are being distributed to promote Homer tourism. He said that the contracts between these advertisers specified that the guides would be distributed ahead of the summer season, and delays may breach those agreements and cause others to seek “remedy.”

No potential estimate as to the cost of either solution — replacing the page or reprinting the guide — was ventured during the hearing or in the court filings. 

Printing a single page and adhering it to the existing guide to cover the Lakeshore Lodging ad, he said, has not been considered a viable option because it would be too difficult to do while maintaining the quality of the product. 

That process, Brad said, would require unpacking boxes of 80 copies each and attempting to apply some form of adhesive and affix a page to the guide. If it’s crooked, the guide looks unprofessional. 

If the guide were to be reprinted, he said, it would take “about four weeks” to get the guide to a busy press, and a number of weeks after that to ship back to Homer. He said ballpark 90 days to complete that process — meaning if it began today they might arrive for the final weeks of July.