Recently, a band came to
see me for the first time about a management agreement. They walked
into the meeting with their infectious up-beat and optimistic
attitude. And why not? They are making good music, playing more and
more gigs and are beginning to be recognised in the street (usually
by screaming young females).
We discussed a number of issues, including protecting the band's
name and they informed me that they hadn't registered their band
name as a trade mark. Gulp.
This is a common oversight made by bands, because, unlike
typical business set-ups, bands are usually born out of a group of
friends enjoying a hobbie which sometimes develops into a career,
as opposed to a career derived from weekly strategy meetings.
As such, some important matters are overlooked and not
revisited until its too late.
There are a number of issues that arise from failure to protect
a band name early, but as this is a blog and not an Intellectual
Property legal textbook, so I shall focus on the two main ones.
The first is entitlement to the name. If you
fail to conduct the necessary preliminiary searches for the name
you intend to use and use the name without protecting it, you may
realise that actually, that band name is owned by someone else! And
as such you are unable to continue to use it, even where you have
built up substantial reputation. Whilst this sounds ludicrous
it does happen, for example: Snow Patrol were originally called
Polar Bears but were forced to change their name due to a conflict
with an American band (their debut album was subsequently
named,Songs for Polarbears). Blink - had to change their name to
Blink182and, Westside had to become Westlife all because they
failed to undertake the key searches! So, if you fail to research
the band name your using, and don't take steps to protect it could
mean that a re-brand is required, damaging the reputation of
the band and exposing the band to a potential claim for trade
mark infringement.
The second issue is ownership. If your band
name hasn't been registered as a trade mark and this issue hasn't
been addressed, who owns the rights to the band name? Is it the
founding member? The band members jointly? The lead singer?
The agent or the record label? is the name owned in equal shares?
Is there an express agreement outlining the ownership?
Do excuse the sporadic questioning, but when ownership is
unclear, many questions have to be answered and argued in order to
ascertain and prove that the rights to the name belong to anyone in
particular and in what proportion. Early registration avoids this
slow and painful to-ing and fro-ing, and bickering about a
conversation once had down the pub in which it was decided that X
will would owneverything (after a suspect amount of beers).Let's
just look at theSugababes as an example. They recently had a
very public dispute about the rightful owner of the band name,
which at the time of the dispute, none of the original members of
the group were part of the Sugababes. Mutya Buena, one of the
original founders has recently claimed victory on her social media
page that she has won the rights to the name. Well. Ermm, not quite
that victorious, as the mark SUGABABES has now been successfully
registered under Ms. Buena's name in relation to Stationary, paper
gift wrap and gift wrapping ribbons and not typically the
usual classes a band would like to register their name against.
Disputes about ownership can be incredibly costly and damaging to a
band's reputation and it is important to address the ownership
question early on in the band's life.
Concluding advice? Well, it's quite simple actually. Address
these issues, have the ownership discussion, do the necessary
preliminary searches and get protection early.