SPECIAL REPORT
If you ever thought about expanding your business into licensing, you need to find out about how intellectual property, copyright and trademarking works. SARA MCDONNELL talks to one garment printer who’s done just that and who now owns the UK copyright on a popular tourist logo.
Intellectual property ...right?
T
he licensing industry is big business, and one that is dominated by the big players. Licensing Global magazineʼs Top 125 Global Licensors include the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon, PGA Tour, Lego and Polaroid. These 125 companies alone account for around 90 per cent of the total global market value, which is a staggering $187.2 bn. But while potentially very lucrative, brand licensing can be a risky and expensive business and anyone thinking of getting involved will need to do their research first. A common route into brand licensing for manufacturers is to become a licensee, whereby they buy a license from the brand owner (or licensor) to reproduce a certain amount of branded merchandise. Restrictions, such as number of units, the way in which the image can be reproduced, and where it is sold, are often part of the deal, as are royalties and up-front costs. Licensees need to have a solid manufacturing base, good links with retail, and a fair amount of cash up front to even think about making it work.
Another route into brand licensing is to become a brand owner. This is not an easy option either. Licensors not only need a strong brand that will sell and is therefore attractive to a potential licensee, but they also need to show that they own the brand and are entitled to produce branded goods and license it out to third parties. However, this is exactly what Colin Toor of London Icons has done. Earlier this year, Toor successfully registered the design for ʻI Love Londonʼ (written as ʻI <heart> Londonʼ) on clothing at the Intellectual Property Office. Itʼs a logo that is well-recognised in London and worn by visitors from all over the world. Itʼs an important step for Toor, who for years has been supplying market stalls and tourist outlets in central London with T shirts branded with the design.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
“Everyone always told me I couldnʼt copyright it, and I believed them,” he says. “I even spoke to specialist people that deal with licensing, and was always told the same thing.” Nevertheless, when Toor finally made the registration application to the Intellectual Property Office in January this year, he was given the UK registered design right for the ʻI Love Londonʼ design the following month. He also has a pending trademark application, which if given, will give him greater powers of ownership. Toorʼs involvement with the ʻI Love Londonʼ logo began more than a decade ago. He grew up surrounded by his familyʼs clothing manufacturing business in Leicester, but instead of joining the family business, he enrolled at the London College of Fashion and became a buyers admin assistant at Top Manʼs HQ in central London. This is where he
first encountered the market traders on Oxford Street outside Debenhams and got the idea for the ʻI Love Londonʼ design. “The buyers assistant came back with an ʻI Love NYʼ T shirt (which, incidentally, is a registered trademark) and I wondered why London didnʼt have anything, so I came up with the ʻI Love Londonʼ design.” He left Top Man and started his own clothing business, supplying market traders on Oxford Street. “I got a four head and started operating it from home,” he remembers. Since then, Toorʼs businesses (Corporate Clothing Company UK Ltd and
logos4polos.com) have grown into a sizeable London-based operation. He reckons they have, between them, embroidered around four million pieces in the last five years, and as many, if not
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