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Legal
Intellectual Property Office considers Bucks Fizz name
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 18 July 2011
The Intellectual Property Office has said it will take up to six weeks to decide who gets to use the name Bucks Fizz – the group containing 25% of the original line-up, or the other group containing 75%. The former incarnation of the one-time Eurovision winners is led by Bobby G, real name Robert Gubby, and although he is the only original member in that version of the group, he does own the Bucks Fizz trademark.
He registered it in 1997 during a previous legal battle over the name. Back then the other original Bucks Fizz boy, Mike Nolan, had teamed up with reality TV geezer and persistent pop man David Van Day – who had briefly performed in Gubby’s Bucks Fizz – to create a new Bucks Fizz. Gubby successful forced Nolan and Van Day to perform under an alternative moniker, and five years later achieved the same thing, albeit through out of court settlement, when Van Day launched yet another Bucks Fizz venture, that time without Nolan.
In 2004 Nolan teamed up with one of the original Bucks Fizz girls, Cheryl Baker, for one of the 80s nostalgia ‘Here & Now’ tours. They also recruited Shelley Preston for the tour, who, although not part of the group’s original Eurovision line-up, had performed with them in the 1980s. And even Gubby, although still regularly performing as Bucks Fizz with an alternative line-up, joined the bill for some ‘Here & Now’ dates. This new incarnation called themselves The Original Bucks Fizz to avoid confusion with Gubby’s concurrent group.
Following the Here & Now tour, Nolan, Baker and Preston continued to perform under the Original Bucks Fizz name on and off. And then, when Preston became unavailable in 2009, Nolan and Baker persuaded the group’s original fourth member, Jay Aston, to return to the stage, meaning the Original Bucks Fizz now consisted of three quarters of the Eurovision line-up.
This all went legal when the Original Bucks Fizz tried to trademark their name. Despite having performed himself under the Original moniker in 2004, Gubby, as the owner of the Bucks Fizz trademark, tried to block his former bandmates’ trademark application. Nolan, Baker and Aston responded by filing an objection to Gubby’s continued use of the Bucks Fizz name. And fans of the Original line-up set up a Facebook group to support Nolan, Baker and Aston’s claims. Good times.
The IPO heard arguments for both sides last week, and said they will now give the case consideration before making a decision in five to six weeks time.
