Who owns ‘Soca Warriors’?

Everyone can tell a story about exactly where they were, what they were doing and who they were with the moment the heard the Soca Warriors had battled their way into history, becoming the smallest English speaking country to qualify. In an instant, the disappointments of 1973 and 1989 were liquidated.

Ten years on, it seems the team may be heading into the campaign for Russia 2018 without the name by which most Trinbagonians have come to identify them.

Another sort of battle entirely, has been quietly brewing on the daily sport pages, this time between veteran broadcaster, Selwyn Melville and head of the Trinidad and Tobago football association, David John-Williams. Melville claims he coined the phrase in 1998 and has been trying to be recognised as the owner of the trademark and to be compensated as such.

On the other side, various incarnations of the TTFA’s board, the most recent headed by John Williams, has just recently announced it is dropping use of the title.

Neither man would comment officially for this article, but the dispute may result in a potentially precedent setting case both in the way trademarks are administered and distributed and the determination of their worth that the business community may want to pay attention to.

For instance, an issue that immediately arises, is why didn’t Melville seek the legal protection for what he alleges is his intellectual property from the beginning? Like most business owners, Melville very likely assumed the goodwill of all stakeholders using the name. Moreover, the cost of filing trademark, copyright and patent documents at the IPO Office in this country are prohibitive, running into tens of thousands of dollars. He may have thought it could have been cheaper to deal with the name users directly.

Depending on the brand involved however, this could be an expensive mistake involving the years of court battles and possibly, loss of income.

The fight for the ‘Japs Fried Chicken’ brand comes to mind. The brand started during the commonlaw relationship between original business owner Nicholas Thomas and Bhagwatee Maraj. Maraj’s son, Darryl Mahabir, the current managing director of Japs, was eventually found to not have the rights to register the trademark, as the courts ruled Thomas still owned 50 per cent of the brand.

Readers casting their minds back to 2006 can probably recall that Soca Warriors paraphernalia was everywhere. T-shirts, caps, towels, key chains. Anyone holding the rights to the name would have owned valuable property.

How valuable, Melville himself gives a clue by demanding US$30 million from the TTFA for the use of Soca Warriors.

The TTFA is reported to have refused this offer.

However, checks with some football stakeholders reveal that the name could be worth as much as US$50 million or just under TT$350 million.

This raises two other significant issues: Why would the TTFA negotiate with Melville? Did it believe, as he claims, he was the originator of the name ‘Soca Warriors’? And given that they attempted to negotiate with him, does the TTFA have to compensate Melville for the use of the name up to this point now that they have decided to drop it? Has the name “Soca Warriors”, functioned as a brand all of these years, even though no formal attempts were made to make it so? The other question that surfaces is, is the TTFA truly laying down its claim? Checks with the US Trademark and Patent Office website show as of Monday November 7, five applications made for various permutations of the name “Soca Warriors” are still ‘live’ or active.

Why make applications for a trademark in the US that has not been yet settled locally? Is it perhaps time for the Government of Trinidad and Tobago to intervene in this affair.

In this time of diversification talk, could the Warrior name as an official brand prove lucrative to the national coffers? Could licensing the use of the name in turn create profits for private sector merchandisers.