Protection Of Television Formats – The Great British Bake Off
The Great British Bake Off isn’t just clever when it comes to cakes. By protecting its IP, it has been able to secure a fortune in licensing.
The other day I met someone who told me that she had been advised that it is not possible “to have copyright in an idea”. As a result, she had given up trying to turn her idea for a programme into reality as she would not be able to secure legal protection over it.
What is protectable
It strikes me that two separate issues are being mixed up here: protection of an idea and protection of a concept that turns into something tangible.
As a general rule ideas cannot be protected other than through the law of confidentiality. So, if a party to whom you wish to disclose an idea is unwilling to sign a confidentiality agreement, (or NDA as it’s often called), there will be little you can do if that party runs off with your idea.
In contrast, once a concept is turned into something tangible like a television programme it is possible to obtain powerful protection for it, in the same way as businesses can.
The intellectual property that affords powerful protection
Protection relies first of all on having a distinctive name. Programmes such as Hotel Insprector are poorly named, as they are too descriptive. It is not possible to have trade mark rights over such names. Even if it had a trade marked name, it would be impossible to stop others putting on separate shows using the concept of an expert visiting and suggesting improvements to failing businesses. So, the Hotel Inspector has led to others running with similar concepts and setting up programmes such as Restaurant Inspector and Business Inspector.
The same goes for business formats such as Air B&B; you can’t stop others copying the concept and setting up competing businesses. But, if you have a distinctive name, at least you will be memorable and can stop competitors using the same or even similar names.
How the Great British Bake Off is protected
An example of a television programme that has protected its intellectual property is the The Great British Bake Off. The show’s producers, Love Productions, protected their IP and have reaped the rewards through a lucrative licensing deal worth millions of pounds.
This was the subject of a recent Guardian article, Great British Bake Off: when iced buns meet intellectual property.
Interestingly, as soon as the programme was launched in 2010, the company filed its trade mark covering a number of classes. Some of them were poorly chosen, but this is unsurprising given that the company did its own trade marking.
Once they were more confident of the progamme’s future success they appointed representatives to file in 8 classes to protect spin offs and merchandise. For example, the company registered in class 9 to protect computer games and other software, in class 16 for various stationery and paper products and in class 28 for toys.
To support its licensing deals, these registrations would have been internationalised in order to extend protection to other countries such as the USA.
Other intellectual property
As well as the Bake Off brand, the company is likely to be licensing its know-how for creating the show and making it a success. Licensees would be given the benefit of its experience in setting tasks and judging completion of the contestants’ tasks. The licensing deal would be likely to include copyright in the programme’s theme tune and its list of cooking tasks.The more intellectual property rights that can be packaged up together, the stronger the protection for the owners of the licence.
In conclusion, if you want to monetise your successful concepts, be they business formats such as Zumba, or television formats such as the Great British Bake Off, it is essential to put in place the right protections. That way you have the full range intellectual property protection to underpin your licensing deals.
