UK NEWS

Rumble With The Jungle

The World Wildlife Fund was founded in 1961 by a group of wildlife enthusiasts including the biologist Julian Huxley and the naturalist Peter Scott to raise funds for species conservation. From the outset, the Fund employed both the acronym WWF and the device of a panda, based on the famous London Zoo panda, Chi Chi, to identify itself. Over the past 40 years, the aims of the Fund have expanded beyond the bounds of traditional conservation and now encompass the protection of the world’s biological diversity, the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption and the maintenance of renewable resources.

For a charitable organisation, the World Wildlife Fund, which in some countries changed its name to the World Wide Fund For Nature in 1989, has always been very commercially minded, a fact that is reflected by a broad trade mark portfolio, including registrations and applications for the three letter mark WWF and a combination of WWF and the panda device. In the UK, for example, the three letter acronym is protected by registrations and an application in all 42 classes.

The Worldwide Wrestling Federation is not a charitable organisation, nor is it dedicated to conservation. Its interests appear to lie more in the areas of mayhem and destruction, preferably choreographed in advance. The Federation was founded in the 1960s by Vince McMahon Sr., but only began to approach its present gargantuan size once it was taken over by his son, who was imaginatively named Vince McMahon Jr., in the 1980s. Jr. introduced such leviathans to the pro-wrestling ring as Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, as well as the now well established trade mark style of the bouts, which to some is known as "attitude" and to others as "pantomime". Today, the Federation is an entertainment goliath whose shares are quoted on NASDAQ and which features such wildlife as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Hardcore Holly. King Lear it is not.

The Federation originally used the acronym WWWF and even today trades as World Wrestling Federation Entertainment (WWFE) on the stock market. However, the logo it uses to publicise its activities, particularly at its website, is a stylised form of the letters WWF which look as if the letters have been scratched onto a hard surface. This is the cause of the potential, legal Smackdown between the WWF charity and the not so charitable Federation.

It is reported that in 1994 the two organisations reached a form of understanding governing the way in which the Federation could use the acronym when marketing its shows. However, it appears that the Fund are unhappy about the way in which the Federation has recently developed its use of the WWF logo, particularly on the Internet and have brought a legal action to control such use, demanding damages for breach of the 1994 agreement.

The Federation may be the expert in the wrestling ring and in the art of orchestrated violence and may, as a consequence, believe that they will overcome the Fund by two falls, two submissions or a knockout. However, they should bear in mind both the Fund’s trade mark rights in the letters WWF, as well as the identity of the charity’s president emeritus who is none other than the Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of our own dear Queen, and a notorious big game hunter.