Archive for August, 2007
|Of London, Lithuania And A Popular Tree
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
A recent story in the London Free Press shows just how powerful Canadian trade-marks are becoming throughout the world – causing a country half a world away to drop a tree design that it had recently chosen to be the symbol for its latest tourism campaign. A similar tree design is the subject of an Official Mark Request advertised by the Canadian Registrar of Trade-marks at the request of the City of London, Ontario, known primarily, until now, as a centre for the insurance industry in Canada and as a University town. The design appears prominently on the City of London’s website.
Once notice of adoption and use of an Official Mark by a public authority has been advertised by the Registrar, the effect is that no other person is entitled, without the consent of that public authority, to adopt, use or register, in Canada, a mark that resembles the Official Mark, regardless of what wares or services that Official Mark is used in association with. The effect of such status is, however, limited to Canada.
Lithuania recently held a contest to choose a new symbol for its tourism campaign. The unofficial winner was submitted by a local advertising business. The winning design contains a tree design similar to the City of London’s tree design. Once this similarity was brought to the attention of the Lithuanian authorities, they, being courteous and perhaps overly cautious people, sought the consent of the City of London to use the tree design.
Curiously, the response from the City of London was apparently a statement that such use would constitute infringement of the Official Mark – it’s not clear if they meant copyright or trade-mark infringement. Hard to reconcile that response with the territorial limitations of London’s Official Mark, at least on the trade-mark front, but the ever polite Lithuanians have apparently decided to ditch the tree design and run another contest. They say that they want something unique (which begs the question, why choose a tree design in the first place?) and don’t want to step on any political toes. The only problem is that the winner of the contest that submitted the tree design is now insisting it didn’t copy the design and is threatening to sue if their design is not chosen the winner.
Posted in Foreign Protection, Protection & Enforcement, Registration | No Comments »
Canucks Unveil New Logo
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
Only in a Canadian city, would the unveiling of a new logo for the local hockey team be the subject of such anticipation and discussion – particularly as the start of the season is over a month away. Today, before 8,000, yes 8,000 fans inside General Motors Place in downtown Vancouver, on one of the rare sunny and warm days the city has seen this summer, the Canucks finally unveiled their new jerseys to the adoring throngs.
Though nothing is showing up on the Canadian Intellectual Property Office online trade-marks database yet, no doubt, applications to register the new logo as a trade-mark have already been filed at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.
Posted in Branding, Registration | No Comments »
Top Brands – GOOGLE on the rise
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
BusinessWeek/Interbrand have released their annual ranking of the 100 Best Global Brands. COCA-COLA and MICROSOFT are ranked as number 1 and 2 respectively but GOOGLE has now broken into the Top 20 and is rising quickly.
Interbrand uses analysts’ projections, company financial documents and its own analysis to determine the rankings. To qualify for the list, a brand must derive at least 1/3 of its earnings outside its home country, be recognizable outside of its customer base and have publicly available marketing and financial data.
Not surprisingly, U.S. companies dominate the list. Once again, no Canadian brands made the list. Given the popularity of BLACKBERRY devices in the global marketplace (8 million subscribers according to RIM’s 2007 Annual Report), it’s interesting that this Canadian success story hasn’t yet made the list. Apparently, ROYAL BANK OF CANADA would have made the list except that it didn’t meet some of the criteria, including the requirement that at least a third of its revenues must come from outside the company’s home country.
Posted in Branding | No Comments »