Here’s good news for merchandisers everywhere:
Swiss officials have ruled to protect the Bin Laden name as a brand name so that that only Osama bin Laden’s Geneva-based half-brother can use the family name as trademark.
This means that if products appear some day with the highly marketable Bin Laden brand name, you’ll KNOW it’s from the real family.
Not that businessman Yeslam Bin Ladin has any immediate plans, though:
“I don’t intend to exploit the brand Bin Ladin commercially for the time being, but registering it will prevent others from using my name to bad effect,” the daily Tribune de Geneve quoted him as saying.
In July 2002 the Federal Intellectual Property Institute revoked the trademark which it had initially granted in August 2001 — a month before al Qaeda launched suicide plane attacks on the United States that killed 3,000 people.
In revoking it, the Swiss authorities argued that the trademark could “morally wound” Swiss and disrupt public order.
But an appeals body, in a decision taken last June but only just published, said public order had not been disrupted and that trademarks should be revoked only in exceptional circumstances.
Don’t get the wrong idea, though. Yeslem Bin Laden isn’t a bad guy: he has repeatedly denounced the Sept. 11 attacks and carnage. His immediate plans are to market a perfume under the name “Yeslam” with the “YB” logo later this year.
We have some other ideas for brand-name products that he might consider:
- Bin Laden Deli Meats: “You’ll lose your head over our cold cuts.”
- Bin Laden Flight Insurance
- OBL Cologne For Suicide Bombers: Smell just like OBL with this truly explosive scent.
- Bin Laden Passover Matzah (This will admittedly require an extensive p.r. and marketing campaign to enter this niche market).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.