Walter Spanghero … “This story is making me cry.” Photo: LaDepeche
CAFÉ PACIFIC couldn’t resist this. Until the horsemeat scandal, Spanghero, a French meat-processing company at the heart of the storm, was better-known as a family of sporting heroes. Publisher David Robie is a great fan of Les Bleus rugby player Walter Spanghero and arrived in Paris from Algeria to work at Agence
Café Pacific – David Robie | Media freedom and transparency
The Zero Knowledge Privacy Foundation has produced a nice presentation laying out the issues and needs for privacy.
I recommend checking it out.
Licensing – Don’t Risk Losing Your Trademark
If your business has reached the stage where you are looking to expand abroad or diversify into different markets, licensing your brand could be the ideal way of achieving this.
With licensing, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t the staff or the money to fund your expansion. You license your brand to a third party that already has the staff and resources available within the target market in which you wish to expand.
The positives are many: it can be a lucrative move and can generate additional revenue for your business; it can increase your brand awareness; and it can help create new products for your brand without running the risk of failure on your part.
Licensing Without Controls
However, licensing has its downsides, too, which can be exacerbated if you don’t manage your licensing effectively. One of the biggest concerns to be aware of is loss of control. So, whilst licensing can boost your brand’s strength, it could equally damage your brand’s reputation.
This is the risk you run if a third party is licensed to use your brand without any restrictions. It’s not just your brand’s reputation that could be damaged; in some cases, a lack of monitoring on how a third party is using your brand name could result in you losing the rights over the name.
Eva’s Bridal Shop
Take the case of Eva’s Bridal Shop in Chicago . In 1966, Eva Sweis opened a bridal shop under the brand name, Eva’s Bridal. The brand built a reputation for providing top quality goods and services. Eva obtained trademark rights in that name.
The trademark was used for generations; friends and family were allowed to set up bridal shops under the Eva’s Bridal label. But in 2007, Eva’s Bridal attempted to take legal action against a former licensee for trademark infringement as he was using the trademark after the license had expired. On the surface, this appeared a fairly simple case of infringement.
However, the original licence agreement exerted no control over the way the trademark was used, and the court ruled that this therefore eliminated Eva Bridal’s trademark rights in that name.
This is because licences over a trademark granted without any regulations or restrictions, are considered to be abandoning the trademark, no matter how long you may have previously had the rights over it.
Therefore, it is vital to ensure when you license a trademark to a third party, it is not just an agreement stipulating how much you are licensing a trademark for, but also to ensure you have control over the way the trademark is used.
Trademark as a Symbol of Trust
Trademarks are there primarily to indicate to the public the origin of goods, and to protect them from confusion. It enables the public to rely on a brand as a signifier of quality, or standard, and is a symbol of trust.
Therefore, if you are planning on licensing your business, be sure to introduce quality controls, and limit the distributor’s rights to sub-license the trademark.
How to License Effectively
The first consideration when approaching a licence agreement is to describe what is being licensed, and to take account of the extent of your trademark portfolio. What specific products or services are covered and in which geographical areas? Who will be responsible for filing further trademarks, and who will bear the cost of these?
As a general rule, it’s important for you, the licensor, to retain responsibility for the trademark registration. The licence will be for a specific period of time and may impose a number of conditions. In return, the licensee agrees to pay you royalties and is willing to do so because you have something that’s popular.
Licensing can be an invaluable tool to some business owners wishing to expand their brand, so, it is essential to make sure that licensing helps rather than hinders your business.
If you have had any experiences of licensing which you would be willing to share, I’d love it if you left a comment below.
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Azrights-IP-Brands-blog-from-the-team-at-Azrights-Intellectual-Property-and-Technology-Solicitors
The New York Times discusses online privacy with Carnegie Mellon University’s Alessandro Acquisti, who has co-authored a draft paper, “Sleights of Privacy: Framing, Disclosures, and the Limits of Transparency” (pdf), on the issue. Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studies how we make these choices [related to online terms of service]. In a [...]
Privacy Lives
In the March episode of The Privacy Blog Podcast, I’ll run down some of the major privacy news events of the last month. Learn how Facebook “Likes” can paint an extremely detailed and eerie picture of your real-life character traits. I’ll provide my take on Google’s Street View Wi-Fi sniffing controversy along with how “Do Not Track” flags are affecting the everyday Internet user. We’ll then touch on the implementation of the “Six Strikes” copyright alert system that was recently adopted by all five major ISP providers.
Stay tuned until the end of the episode to hear about Anonymizer’s exciting new beta program for Android and iOS devices. Thanks for listening!
Billy Hallowell is in studio with Ezra to talk about The Blaze’s trailblazing.
This report aired on The Source March 29 2013.
Fiji Times chief editor Fred Wesley … suspended jail sentence. Photo: Media Freedom in the Pacific
video frame/Cafe Pacific
HARD on the heels of a new decree by Fiji’s military-backed regime effectively gagging reporting about political parties no longer officially “registered”, the country’s most influential newspaper Fiji Times has been clobbered judicially. It has paid a tough price –
Café Pacific – David Robie | Media freedom and transparency
Darrell Bricker joins Ezra Levant to discuss his book The Big Shift and the new alignment of Canadian politics.
This report aired on The Source March 29 2013.
French servicemen watch a nuclear test at Moruroa atoll. A still from the documentary.
ALL THOSE nuclear-free Pacific campaigners from Tahiti’s Oscar Temaru to a generation of Greenpeace activists would have been so delighted with the triumph of a 52-minute documentary at this year’s FIFO Pacific Film Festival in Tahiti last weekend. A vindication for the “children of la bombe”. The film Aux
Café Pacific – David Robie | Media freedom and transparency
