The amazingly talented Swedish artist Loreen succeeded in bringing the Eurovision Song Contest to Sweden and Malmö, the hometown of AWAPATENT. Malmö has now been all glammed up and is more than ready to welcome Europe.
For those of you who aren´t already die-hard fans of the Eurovision Song Contest, the ESC, here is some background information. The European Broadcasting Union, the EBU, was founded in 1950 by 23 broadcasting organizations and is today an alliance of public service media organizations with members in 56 countries in and outside of Europe. Marcel Bezençon, an employee of the EBU, popped the brilliant idea of the Eurovision Song Contest during a meeting in 1955 and the first Eurovision Song Contest was broadcasted in 1956. The rest is, as you say, history and the ESC has been an annual event since. On its 50th birthday in 2005, Swedish Eurovision winner ABBA, with their song Waterloo, was voted Best ever ESC song by viewers.
The ESC is produced by the national public broadcaster of the winning country of the year before and even with this travelling circus the EBU still seem able to control the use of their IP-rights. The EBU seemingly works on keeping a close legal control over the competition, for example all broadcasting and other rights to the ESC shows are exclusively owned by the EBU and managed centrally by EBU on behalf of the participating broadcasters.
The trademark EUROVISION and the Eurovision logotype, among other trademarks, are owned by the EBU and the Eurovision Standard Terms and Conditions constitute that the EBU have absolute discretion over the development and exploitation of these trademarks. The Eurovision Song Contest Rules clearly state how the shows are allowed to be titled, any deviations is to be approved by the EBU. Also, the EBU is in close collaboration with the hosting national public broadcaster in organizing the contest and managing the brand.
But no need to worry that the ESC will get stuffy and out-dated, the EBU has initiated a Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group which are responsible for important tasks such as the development and future format of the competition and modernizing the brand. All you need to worry about is voting for your favorite on Saturday and keeping your fingers crossed!
Sources and further reading:
www.ebu.ch
www.eurovision.net
www.eurovision.tv
Hanna Nilsson, Attorney at Law
