If you dwell on the wrong side of the Pond, you’ll know that an F-150 is the single most successful automotive phenomenon on the planet. Part of the Ford F-Sequence of pickup trucks, the Ford F-150 sells more than any automobile in the US and has been a mainstay of Ford’s income for more than fifty years.
If you’re an F1 fan you will know that Ferrari has declared its vehicle for 2011 and named it the Ferrari F150, apparently naming the vehicle in celebration of 150 many years of Italian unification. All of which has lead to a lifestyle clash in between blue-collar Ford and its good aged boy pickup and the Italian aristocracy that is Ferrari.
Ford has issued legal proceedings in the US to cease Ferrari employing the F150 name, and demanding damages from Ferrari for cybersquatting by launching a website with the F150 name www.ferrariF150.com. All of which, on the face of it, looks a bit daft. Who could quite possibly confuse a Ford Pickup with Ferrari’s newest F1 automobile? But that is not the position.
Firms need to defend the assets, be they physical or intellectual. They also need to be observed to be safeguarding their assets, which is far much more what this is about (apart from the totally free publicity for the Ford F-150) than actually getting any income out of Ferrari.
For if Ford fails to consider and protect its copyright on the F-150 as far as Ferrari is concerned, they will uncover it significantly harder to convince a court of a breach of copyright in the future. Which could lead, for example, to a Chinese corporation plagiarising the Ford F-150 – title and all – and Ford then struggling to enforce their copyright as they had failed to show a willingness to shield it in the past.
