Sunny Side Up

When Matt and Meg pressed the button on their hi-tech, multi-media company, Egg Media Industries, they didn’t give a hoot about the rest of the world, let alone Jodie Foster. But all that changed as their understanding of IP grew.

“When we started, our emphasis was more on bringing money through the door to ensure we had the cash flow to do the kind of work we wanted to do,” Meg insisted.

But as their business grew out of their Bondi Beach flat, they saw potential IP problems staring at them.

“We are Egg Media Industries but there is also an Egg Design and Egg Media Productions. We discovered this when we went looking for the URL for our website.”

And as their business expands further, they say it is even more important to get their IP right.

“In fact, our business is doing well and we’re looking at having a rep based in Los Angeles ,” Meg said. “When we first started, the thought of going international was a little bit too ‘out there’.

Now we’re going more into Asia and America we’re going to have to address the issues we should’ve looked at from the start. It became evident to me that we were not IP savvy when we heard about the Absolut Beach swimwear versus Absolut Vodka case” Meg admitted. [ Absolut Beach , a small Sydney-based clothing manufacturer, sold swimwear via the internet. Multinational company Vin & Spirit, makers of Absolut Vodka, objected and took legal action to stop Absolut Beach from trading on the internet under the name ‘Absolut’. As a result, Absolut Beach were sued for domain name and trade mark infringement and was forced to shut down their site, eventually sending them into liquidation] “I’m also aware of the McDonalds bakery that had to change its name. We’ve not known until recently where to go or how to protect our company. As a small business you never believe you’ll come to the attention of big business. That’s not the way you think.”

“ US actress, Jodie Foster has a company called Egg,” Meg said. “We never thought our business name would be in competition with someone like Jodie but the more we do more global work, who knows what will happen? That’s why we’re lifting our IP game. We now realise that having a registered trade mark is vital, as our internet presence is strong. We also make sure our production work is protected by copyright so any reproduction of it brings a benefit back to us,” Meg said.

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