If you live 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-Series of pickup trucks, the Ford F-150 sells more than any car in the US and has been a mainstay of Ford’s profits for over fifty years.
If you’re an F1 fan you’ll know that Ferrari has announced its car for 2011 and named it the Ferrari F150, apparently naming the car in celebration of 150 years of Italian unification. All of which has lead to a culture clash between blue-collar Ford and its good old boy pickup and the Italian aristocracy that is Ferrari.
Ford has issued legal proceedings in the US to stop Ferrari using 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, seems a bit daft. Who could possibly confuse a Ford Pickup with Ferrari’s latest F1 car? But that’s not the point.
Companies need to protect the assets, be they physical or intellectual. They also need to be seen to be protecting their assets, which is far more what this is about (apart from the free publicity for the Ford F-150) than actually getting any money out of Ferrari.
For if Ford fails to try and protect its copyright on the F-150 as far as Ferrari is concerned, they will find it much harder to convince a court of a breach of copyright in the future. Which could lead, for example, to a Chinese company plagiarising the Ford F-150 – name and all – and Ford then struggling to enforce their copyright as they had failed to demonstrate a willingness to protect it in the past.
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