Blog: Lessons of 2012 - Trademark Law (part one)

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When i started out on the road of ROCK I hoped it would mostly involve showing off, talking to girls, and BEER. To be fair, there HAS been a bit of that, but mostly it seems to have been a long training session in TRANSFERABLE SKILLS. Setting up PA systems, writing press releases, HTML programming, dealing with printers, manufacturing merchandise, The British Postal System, these and MANY MANY MANY MANY other SKILLZ have entered my SKILLSET over the years, and in 2012, much to my surprise, we had another new entry: TRADEMARK LAW.

It may surprise you to know that I spend a lot of my time SELF-GOOGLING. Yes yes, it is a shock I know, to disover that one so INHERENTLY MODEST as I would do such a thing, but it is all part of Maintaining The Online Brand and Cross-Platform Promotion i.e. if a song pops up on a webpage somewhere it's generally a good idea to mention it on twitter, or sometimes we'll get featured somewhere ODD (as happened a LOT last year) and I'll need to DO something about. Social Media ACTION!

It was while doing this self-googling, just over a year ago, that I discovered there was another band calling themselves The Validators. Now, this was a bit annoying (surely EVERYBODY checks online before choosing a band name these days?) but I thought to myself "Oh well, they'll probably split up soon anyway, as most bands do, and they're only playing gigs in their hometown."

A month or so later I got a flurry of texts from people asking about NEW T-SHIRTS and a gig in Camden - it turns out this lot had booked a GIG in London, and had made merchandise. This was VERY annoying - in these days of Search Results and Online Shopping the world is RIPE for mistakes if this sort of thing carries on. I sent them a couple of emails to point this out to them, politely saying that we'd been using the name for 15 years, that it could easily cause confusion, and to ask them please to change their name before things went too far.

I received no response, so a few weeks later John The Publisher consulted with his LAWYER and we wrote a slightly stronger worded letter, which I emailed to them. This time I got a reply from their manager, who asked me to ring him to sort it all out. I did this and we had a very pleasant chat - he clearly wasn't up to SPEED with Modern Stuff, and told me that they HAD googled the name "The Validators", knew that we existed, but decided "it'd be OK". I politely told him it probably wouldn't, and pointed out the very very many ways things could get confusing, with gig listings, online shops, gig bookings etc etc etc. "Oh yes," he said, "We did have a thing when you played a gig at The Wilmington" [in January last year] "and they linked to our site instead. I had to ring up to see what was happening."

We had a very pleasant discussion, which was a HUGE relief to me, at the end of which he agreed to talk to the band at their next gig (in Camden - he invited me along but I couldn't go). He said they'd sort out a new name and get back to me shortly afterwards. PHEW!

The gig came and went and I heard nothing. After a month I emailed to ask how they were getting on. I heard nothing, so asked again. They didn't reply, so I looked on their facebook page and saw that they were booking MORE gigs, STILL using our name, DESPITE promising to change. After another couple of weeks I emailed yet again to ask what on earth was going on.

This time I DID get a reply, and a spectacularly ARSEY one at that. He told me to "get off my high horse" and "concentrate on the music." They had their "own identity" he said and would not be changing their name. This, he said, was his final word on the matter. I was, as you can probably understand, FLIPPING LIVID. We'd clearly had the name for MUCH longer, I'd explained to him the reason they couldn't have the same name, and he'd completely agreed, and now THIS. I sent one more reply VERY POLITELY saying how sorry I was to hear that, asking him to reconsider, and saying I'd be pursuing the matter further. I got, of course, no reply.

But what could I do about it? I looked at MUSIC LAWYER stuff and it was all INCREDIBLY expensive. I asked on twitter and everybody said "You can't do anything - forget it" or "Why are you so bothered about it? It's just a name." This latter was VERY upsetting - we've spent the past 15 years as The Validators, put in HUGE amounts of time, effort and indeed LOVE. It's been one of the biggest things in my LIFE, and suddenly I was being told that it didn't matter, and that I should just lie down and let some bunch of rude twits STEAL it.

And then I read up on Trademark Law.

It turns out that Trademark Law is pretty easy - as long as nobody else has done it you can trademark a brand name in the UK for about three hundred quid with a PEASY form. It also turns out that the Intellectual Property Office is INCREDIBLY nice and helpful - a lady from their offices even RANG ME UP to talk me through the process, as I'd mentioned in an email (they REPLY to emails!) that I was off on holiday soon, and she didn't want me to miss the deadline! I tell you what, I would apply AGAIN in an INSTANT if only I had something to trademark!

THUS my claim was filed and I spent the next six months or so waiting, watching the other lot book more and more gigs and getting the occasional email from people saying "Why didn't you tell me you were playing this festival?" that THEY had booked on to. I also noted they were talking on Facebook (and twitter - though I had LEAPT in and got @thevalidators as soon as the whole business started) about RECORDING songs, which made it all even more worrying - part of the reason for getting in touch with them EARLY was so they DIDN'T invest time and money recording anything under our name, so that they DIDN'T end up with a load of STOCK they couldn't sell.

I ALSO spent a lot of time fending off emails and ACTUAL LETTERS from INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS!! When you apply for a trademark your name and address gets printed in their magazine, and apparently INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS subscribe to it, nick the details, and WRITE to you saying "Oh yes, you have to pay another fee of X AMOUNT OF CA$H directly to US now, it is all part of the trademark thing, send us CA$H". I'd been forewarned about this by the IPO but still, it was a bit of a shock to get so much of it.

Anyway, six months later I got a CERTIFICATE through the post, which looked like this:



It was VERY exciting - here I was, a bona fide TRADEMARK HOLDER! In the excitement I added a (TM) symbol to our usual logo, then discovered that ACTUALLY I wanted the (R) symbol, for LO! (TM) is just for people saying "This belongs to me!", like the copyright symbol, but (R) is ONLY for people who have REGISTERED it - for LO! AGAIN! I was getting myself READ UP on the whole thing, ready to take it to the NEXT LEVEL.

And that's exactly what i did... as we'll discover TOMORROW!

posted 3/1/2013 by MJ Hibbett

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