Warren Miller Entertainment has filed a lawsuit against Level 1 Productions for trademark infringement as a result of Warren Miller's participation in Level 1's new ski movie, Refresh.

Last week, Warren Miller Entertainment (which is a separate entity from Warren Miller himself, and his foundation "The Warren Miller Freedom Foundation") filed a lawsuit against Level 1 Productions for trademark infringement as a result of Warren Miller's participation in Level 1's new ski movie, "Refresh".

Warren Miller, who is no longer affiliated with Warren Miller Entertainment, willingly provided commentary in Level 1 Productions' 10th film, Refresh, which has been receiving rave reviews.



Level 1 Productions is a small ski film company based in Denver, Colorado that is owned and operated by Josh Berman, who makes newschool ski movies.


Pro skier Tom Wallisch with Level 1 Productions' Josh Berman

Shortly after the filing of the lawsuit, Warren Miller Entertainment also entered a plea for a Temporary Restraining Order that would prevent last week's premiere of Refresh in Boulder, Colorado, which was denied by Judge Marcia Krieger, at which point the premiere took place in front of a capacity crowd at the Bluebird Theatre.

Following the filing of the lawsuit and the denial of the Temporary Restraining Order, both Level 1 and Warren Miller Entertainment released statements concerning the lawsuit, and earlier this week, Warren Miller himself entered the lawsuit as a potential third party intervenor. His Opposition is forcefully challenging Warren Miller Entertainment's trademark allegations, and alleging that WME should have approached him, not Level 1, over this dispute as opposed to suing Level 1.


Warren Miller

Although Warren Miller Entertainment lost the initial motion for an interim injunction (mainly due to the very short notice and duration of its filing), they are still pushing for a preliminary injunction against Level 1 for between now and the trial, which is scheduled to take place on October 22nd.

For more information and details on the ongoing lawsuit, go to Newschoolers.com.

Words & photos by Dan Carr

The weather gods were so stoked with how the slopestyle competition went down yesterday, they decided to stay and watch the pipe comp today too.

After the freeskiing insanity that was the New Zealand Open slopestyle competition, the pipe competition today had a lot to live up to. Another gloriously blue day greeted the athletes, along with a beautifully shaped pipe, albeit with one hard wall and one soft wall.

The girls kicked things off in style with some of the riders demonstrating just how versatile they can be. Fresh off her slopestyle victory, Canada’s Dania Assaly boosted her whole run and picked up third spot. In second place was Anais Caradeux from France who sacrificed a little amplitude and replaced it with a lot of style and technicality. Her solid run even enticed a little shriek of delight from the otherwise normally quiet French girl. First place though went to none other than Wanaka local, Janina Kuzma, last week's winner of the New Zealand Open Big Mountain competition. It seems she is just as at home with her park skis on as her powder skis.

Women's Results

1) Janina Kuzma - 81.4
2) Anais Caradeux - 80.8
3) Dania Assaly - 78.6
4) Shuri Terada - 68.0
5) Bridie-Anne Read - 61.8
6) Amy Sheehan - 34.8

The men’s pipe comp didn’t have the same epic number of entries as the previous day’s competition and none of the riders were pre-qualified for the finals. A two-run qualification picked the eight riders for the showdown.

Much the same as yesterday, there was a great vibe about the competition as the DJ pumped out the Reggae music. “The comp was run for the riders, which is like it should be” said Taylor Seaton. Certainly one reason why it felt more like a jam session than a contest with thousands of dollars up for grabs.

We haven’t seen Jossi ski a lot of pipe recently but he proved he has forgotten nothing by placing first in front of the home crowd.

Men's Results

1) Jossi Wells - 84.6
2) Taylor Seaton USA - 81.6
3) AJ Kemppainen - 80.0
4) David Wise - 76.4
5) Lyndon Sheehan - 71.2
6) Tucker Perkins - 66.4
7) Thomas Krief - 62.0
8) Walter Wood - 24.8
9) Matt Margetts CAN - 18.4
10) Gus Kenworthy - 18.2

Words & photos by Dan Carr

Every August an increasing proportion of the skiing community makes the migration south of the Equator to Wanaka, New Zealand. With so many of the top pros in town, the competition scene here has been heating up over the last couple of years and the word about town was that this year's New Zealand Freeski Open could very well play host to the most impressive slopestyle competition ever witnessed. The vibe amongst the competitors was unique, everybody was stoked to be skiing with each other again, and stoked on the course that Cardona had laid down for them.

Starting off with a couple of flat-down rails, into a pair of parallel up rails, followed by three jumps of increasing size; it wasn’t the longest course but it was beautifully prepared.

The women’s competition went down first on day ine and Dania Assaly took home first with a solid run ending with a 900 on the money booter at the bottom of the course. This years X Games slope winner, Anna Segal, came in second with her 180, switch 5 and flat 3 combo on the bottom three jumps. Third place went to Eva-Maria Patscheider from Austria who added the podium finish to her third place at this year’s European Open.

Women's Results

1) Dania Assally - 89.4
2) Anna Segal - 85.8
3) Eva-Maria Patscheider - 82.8
4) Chiho Takao - 63.0
5) Arianna Tricomi - 56.6
6) Shuri Terada - 51.6
7) Sofie Windstedt - 17.6
8) Julie Benard - 17.4

Twelve riders were pre-qualified for the men’s finals but a further eight would need to be selected from the 51 strong field in the qualifiers. Unfortunately the weather had other plans though and notorious “Cardrona fog” came in quick and thick. All 50 riders successfully completed their first runs but following this the judges had a tough time seeing the whole course.

Riders and judges persevered with the conditions, sending someone every time a gap in the clouds appeared. At the end of the day though, not every rider managed to complete both qualifying runs so the decision was made to bump the finals to the next day and to give all riders a rebate on their second qualifying run the next morning.

Wanaka woke to a cloudless sky the next morning and the delay to the finals had only served to heighten people’s expectations. When training began in the morning it was obvious that the crowd wouldn’t be disappointed as a continuous train of double variations was sent over the final jump. Today, spinning both ways and throwing a dub was not going to guarantee you anything. In fact, 19 of the 22 finalists threw some sort of double variation on the final jump and only a couple of guys were not ambidextrously spinning in every direction. A little time away from the competition scene seemed to have done the world of good and it was great to see everyone having such a good time in a relaxed atmosphere.

When the scores were tallied up Bobby Brown came out on top closely followed by Wallish who put down an almost identical run apart from the top rail feature. Bobby went with the switch 450 disaster and Wallish went for the blind swap, pretzl. The top 3 all finished off their runs with perfect double cork 12's.

This really was one of the most impressive displays yet seen by the freeskiing community. “The slopestyle course was awesome. I loved it,” said Brown. “It was the best competition I’ve been in for a long time, the event had a great feel to it.” The evolution of slopestyle skiing continues then and whilst the podium finishers all used the double cork 12 as their weapon, it was also good to see some innovation amongst other riders, throwing in new grabs or even entirely new axis' into their doubles. Elias Ambuhl and Matt Margetts in particular brought something different to the final jump in the line. And a quick shout needs to go out to Matt Phillipi and Andri Ambuhl. Both guys skied super hard but had nasty falls. Heal fast my friends.

Men's Results

1) Bobby Brown - 93.0
2) Tom Wallish - 90.0
3) Henrik Harlaut - 86.6
4) Matt Margetts - 83.0
5) Russ Henshaw - 81.0
6) Jossi Wells - 78.2
7) Per Christian Fosse - 75.4
8) AJ Kemppainen - 74.4
9) Elias Ambühl - 70.6
10) Mike Hornbeck - 67.4
11) Jaime Puigdengoles - 62.2
12) Ian Cosco - 55.0
13) Bene Mayr - 53.2
14) John Spriggs - 50.8
15) Byron Wells - 49.4
16) Matt Soundy - 45.4
17) Andri Ambühl - 39.2
18) Gus Kenworthy - 25.0
19) Leigh Powis - 22.0
20) Kentaro Tsuda - 15.0