Rob de Castella's Indigenous Marathon Foundation is still hopeful it can reach an agreement with one of its star graduates who has applied to trademark the name Deadly Runners and accused the foundation of co-opting her training program and taking it Australia-wide without her consent.
Georgia Gleeson is one of the foundation's success stories, a mother-of-four who completed the New York Marathon in 2013, through its Indigenous Marathon Project, under the mentorship of Mr de Castella.
She later became a running coach with Athletics Australia and started the Queanbeyan Deadly Runners community running group in 2014, encouraging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to start running to improve their physical and mental health.
In February 2019, Ms Gleeson applied to trademark the name Deadly Runners because she was concerned the Indigenous Marathon Foundation had taken her own idea of community running groups and instead called them Deadly Running.
In October, 2019, the Indigenous Marathon Foundation opposed Ms Gleeson's trademark application for Deadly Runners, saying it had used Deadly Running since 2012 as part of its community fun run program, building considerable goodwill around the name which it did not want to risk or have confused.
In an attempt to resolve the issue, the foundation had made offers to Ms Gleeson including acknowledging she is the founder of the Deadly Runner groups in Australia, offering $10,000 to buy or lease the Deadly Runners name and giving an annual Georgia Gleeson Award to an outstanding Deadly Runner.
But Ms Gleeson, who is being represented by indigenous law firm Terri Janke and Company, which specialises in indigenous cultural and intellectual property, has resisted all overtures, saying the issue is not just the trademark.
She believes the foundation has used her intellectual property in co-opting her Deadly Runners training program as its own, taking it Australia-wide, as she intended, and seeking grants funding on the back of them. Ms Gleeson said she had wanted to have a full-time job taking the Deadly Runners groups Australia-wide, but that the Indigenous Marathon Foundation had instead done that.
Ms Gleeson said she was not seeking compensation.
"I want the truth to come out. It's not about money. It's not about me wanting to cripple the organisation because at the end of the day, a lot of indigenous people have benefited from this," Ms Gleeson said.
"And I need him [Mr de Castella] to be fair in acknowledging the use of my intellectual property. It should have been a partnership from the start, not them taking it and going with it."
After speaking with The Canberra Times on Wednesday, Mr de Castella on Thursday said the Indigenous Marathon Foundation had withdrawn its objection to Ms Gleeson's registration of the Deadly Runners trademark.
Ms Gleeson's partner Michael Weir said they both cried with relief when they heard the news of the withdrawal but were adamant the intellectual property issue remained live if the foundation only rebranded its training programs that they believed Ms Gleeson created,
Mr de Castella said any rebranding was "still to be determined" and the foundation would consult with its Indigenous running community about the way forward. He was disappointed an agreement could not be reached with Ms Gleeson who he said he loved and respected and wanted to work with.
"I was optimistic that we could come to an agreement, however that is now clearly not possible," he said, on Friday.
"The media coverage is doing damage and overshadowing all the amazing and great work we and our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island community is doing." I started the foundation to support and stand with Indigenous Australians. That is what we do."
Mr de Castella said the foundation received very little funding for its community running groups which were free and run by volunteers.
Ultimately, he and the foundation's pro-bono lawyers had been struggling with what Ms Gleeson was claiming was her intellectual property, saying "running is not that complicated, training groups are not that complicated".
"I know more about running than just about anyone in the country and I'm a little surprised if Georgia thinks she can write programs that I can't write," he said.
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