House Majority Leader David Clark, R-Santa Clara, Utah, likened the deed to diverting a shopper who enters a particular department store to buy a dress shirt.

"You get right to the front door and somebody whisks you away to a different store," said Clark, who said he didn't need persuading to become a sponsor of the law.

Eastman and Clark said they didn't come up with the idea but believe in the cause. They said they understood they were doing the bidding of a select group of Utah companies. That group, they said, includes 1 800 Contacts Inc., which has been fighting a losing court battle against pop-up advertiser WhenU.com. They also mentioned Internet retailer Overstock.com.

Representatives at both companies acknowledged they have a problem with rivals stealing their customers but insist they weren't involved in drafting the Internet trademark law.

Eastman and Clark said they were approached by Unspam Technologies Inc., a Utah company that maintains a state database of children's e-mails kept off-limits to adult advertising. Unspam operates a similar database for Michigan, and critics say the company is angling to maintain Utah's new trademark registry.

At first, Unspam Chief Executive Matthew Prince denied his company was involved, but the legislative sponsors said Unspam Vice President Erin Barry, who also is a registered lobbyist, pushed the legislation.

Ask for clarification, Prince said Barry was freelancing when she talked up legislators about "ways this could benefit Utah."

"We wear different hats," Prince wrote Monday by e-mail.

In one of his own hats, Prince is identified only as an adjunct professor at Chicago's John Marshall Law School on the Utah Senate's blog site, where he wrote a defense of the Trademark Protection Act. The blog makes no mention of Prince's business interests.

In an interview, Prince called Utah a laboratory of democracy.

"This is a very hot and controversial area of trademark law," he said.

Goldman maintains that Utah has made a mess of trying to regulate the Internet. McLaughlin said the law is so badly written it allows anyone to register another's trademark or any generic word.

"We got some scientists in the Utah Legislature cooking up some really bad experiments," Goldman said.