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| He's worried too |
Lacoste, the people who provide golfers and others with fashionably anodyne clothes decorated with a rather twee crocodile, have reportedly asked the Norwegian police to prevent Anders Breivik from appearing publicly in their garments with logo visible to photographers.
It is not known what was the police response, but this clearly exposes a grave gap in international intellectual property protection legislation. It is to be hoped that world trade authorities will take rapid and effective action. Unless global corporations can control who associates themselves with their brands and how (and not only in such high-profile cases as this) the value of these brands, so important to the material and spiritual well-being of us all, will be undermined and social stability and growth will be betrayed.
We need a rapidly formalised and effective system whereby in purchasing any branded product we assent to terms under which the brand-owners can control when we should and should not display their goods to any group of more than three people, in what circumstances, in association with what other products and with what standards of personal appearance and conduct. This must be made to stick; get the legal draughtsmen onto it now.
I wonder, did they ask the crocodiles?
