.....AND YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HAT ON........

.........Well , given their troubled start to the season it's nice to see Arsenal winning something at last , even if it is just a hat job..........or a least a court case for ' infringement of commercial rights ' against a small ladies hat shop in Seville .

Yeah , right...................

........Personally I am not convinced that the lady in question sort to gain any sort of commercial advantage by aligning herself with the might of North London , but given the obscene amounts of money sloshing around in football these days , these clubs get very touchy and protective of their rights.

Working in the Leisure Industry I see enough of branding consultants and re-branding as it is , and most of it to me is money down the drain - the ' Branding Industry ' has seem to become the one-stop fail-safe  port-of-call for any operation that is seen to be falling short of expectations .  Mind you , some clients don't help themselves .....working on a ' Spanish ' bar in Castlefields in Manchester called Barca  ( ! ) some twelve years or so ago , the client showed me a file some 500mm thick of correspondence from Barcelona Football Club threatening to sue .....Surprise.............and then there was the client who was opening a new bar , again in Manchester and decided to call it ' Prada ' on the somewhat dubious reasoning that ' Victoria Beckham says she can't find Prada in Manchester............." Oh, ok - you have checked it out and got clearance on the name, then , Robert ......? ".................." Sure , it's ok , its not registered "...........fair enough it wasn't , as a bar.  On the day of opening the clients got tucked up with a writ quoting ' infringement of commercial rights ' , had to immediately dump all signage , menus , crockery etc and were out of pocket to the tune of 50k . The bar closed shortly afterwards.

.......And some clients see it as an ego-massaging thing - with three or four units under their belt they go to the ' City ' for re-financing..........and then the financier's arm goes around their shoulder ....." Hey guys , now you are big-time , let me introduce you to the Branding Agency that we also own here in town ".... " Well of course , we need to dump all the design work and designers that got us this far , now that we are important " ............yeah , right.............. thanks guys.

......Anyway , it's good to know that at least these two have settled their differences..........

.........although given that one was a world-wide logo for cutting edge creativity and the other one is the logo of some star-up computer geek from the West Coast or somewhere I don't see much room for confusion there....................

...................Maybe it's a generational thing.....................

........and as this blog is posted , lawyers are arguing over the copyright of the ' In Memory ' logo - its all about the angle of the head or something..............