[Tigers] Shelby and SAAC

[Smit, Theo]

One way to approach this is to establish a Sunbeam automobile (or maybe
Rootes group, to make the umbrella as big as possible) society whose
express purpose it is to manage trademark issues. This society would
need to file for trademark registration of all the Rootes brands it
wanted to control. It would then be the responsibility of this
organization to go after anyone publishing pictures or other material
related to Rootes group products, and ensure that they were aware that
publishing pictures of the Rootes trademarked vehicles required a
license. The organization could then play trading cards with any other
interested parties: You can use ours if we can use yours.

I would guess that some of this stuff, as it relates to Shelby, might
fall under his $1 license fee. If that's true then I would commend him
for taking a reasonable stance; he wants (or needs) to be in control of
the way his brand gets published, but by charging a minimal license fee
he's not actually making it very difficult for anyone to publish
material featuring his products.

The thing about trademark enforcement (at least in the US) is that it
HAS to be done, or else you lose the right to control your brand, and
this is most likely why the cease and desist letters are flying. I would
guess that some enterprising individual got a court decision to
invalidate someone's trademark based on non-enforcement, and that has
all the big names running scared.

Theo