The attempt to trade mark the term 'social enterprise' by the multimedia firm Salesforce is not only mystifying, it's ludicrous. But the energy spent by Social Enterprise UK to stop the granting of the trade mark, which to date includes a branded campaign ("not in our name"), a video, a logo, twitter hashtags – the full bhoona in other words – is completely disproportionate to the supposed 'threat'.
Firstly, I would contend that, according to the criteria by which the UK's Intellectual Property Office or indeed the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), based in Spain, determines whether a word or phrase is eligible for Trade Mark protection, one can only reasonably conclude that the application is unlikely to succeed.
Secondly, the IPO point out quite clearly on their website, 'TM' has no legal significance in the United Kingdom. Early in my career I spent a fair amount of enjoyable time in the company of the late great George Hamlyn, director of marketing for the then UK Patent Office. His presentations always used to inform his (always) captivated audience that TM stood for "Truly Meaningless".
Furthermore, the application for the Community Trade Mark was only filed on 24 July. It hasn't even reached the stage where the Office would invite reasonable objections to the granting of the Mark. And there are plenty of reasonable grounds for objecting. But from the little information available on the website it seems the application has yet to be properly assessed.
Perhaps it's time to pause and think. To become a bit more confident in our own skin. We have a fair bit to be confident about.
The phrase has been in use, as Peter Holbrook points out, both within the US and Europe for well over a decade (actually closer to 20 years). But even in relation to social media, which is the context relevant to the Salesforce application, I have personally stumbled across many examples in cyberspace of the phrase being used in this fashion, usually in connection with businesses being exhorted to buy into the latest cloud computing platform, or get Facebook-ed to the max, or whatnot.
My advice to social enterprise movement is let the social media crowd do their own thing: we are as irrelevant to them as they are to us. They'll be on to the next fad in a year or so anyway so let's stop giving free marketing to a private multimedia company.
We need urgently to reflect on whether money, energy and resources might be better served fighting battles on several more important fronts. Perhaps against real, not imaginary, threats. Because there are plenty of threats to be found if one cares to look hard enough.
Michael Roy is a researcher for the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University
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