Get Up, Stand Up, Defend Your Trademark Rights

Bob Marley's heirs are waging a global war on trademark pirates.

Heirs of the Jamaican reggae legend are plunging into the global trademark wars, seeking to enforce their exclusive rights to an image that has grown steadily in scope and appeal since the Jamaican superstar died of brain cancer in 1981 at age 36.

The Marley name, look and sound are estimated to generate an estimated $600 million a year in sales of unlicensed wares. Legal sales are much smaller - just $4 million for his descendants in 2007, according to Forbes magazine. The Marleys refuse to give a figure.

Now the family has hired Toronto-based Hilco Consumer Capital to protect their rights to the brand. Hilco CEO Jamie Salter believes Marley products could be a $1 billion business in a few years.

"The family managed all the rights before Hilco was brought on board," said Marley's fourth son, Rohan - a former linebacker for the University of Miami. "We didn't have a real good grasp on the international scope prior to Hilco, nor the proper management."

The turn to big business has stirred some grousing from die-hard fans in Internet chat rooms, who say it goes against the grain of a singer who preached nonmaterialism and popularized the Rastafarian credo of oneness with nature and marijuana consumption as a sacrament. But it is doubtful that this crew will be vocal for long, after all, they need to go to the store soon to get cookie dough.

Lorna Wainwright, who manages a Kingston studio and music shop called Tuff Gong, Marley's nickname during his boyhood in a nearby slum, backed the move, saying "the world needs the Bob Marley police."

"It's a free-for-all out there with all the fakes, all the piracy," she said. "It's important to continue getting his real message out like when he was alive because the world is in a crisis and Bob Marley's lyrics provide a solution." Translation - pay the man.

Rather than focusing on street vendors, who hawk everything from Bob Marley T-shirts to beach towels, the partnership is creating a new line of products dubbed "House of Marley" and will police the trademark vigilantly.

"You're never going to stop the guys in the streets, flea markets ... but you try as much as you can," said Salter.

Snowboards and tropical Jamaica may seem an odd pairing, but they're among a wide variety of planned merchandise featuring the dreadlocked musician's image, name or message - backpacks, stationery, headphones, musical instruments, restaurants. What no, err, pipes?

Items are expected to hit the market in mid-2010.

The Trademark Company