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At first blush, it's hard to imagine a crasser claim or a nervier lawsuit than the one against the American Red Cross over its rights to the red cross.
A money-making corporation is taking on a storied, humanitarian organisation over its world-famous symbol.
We are talking about the
group Civil War nurse Clara Barton founded, a group that sends a million volunteers a year into ravaged areas to ease suffering wreaked by flood or hurricane, earthquake or fire.
"I am shocked that it came to this, absolutely shocked," American Red Cross chief executive Mark Everson said last week.
Who would do such a thing to this life-saving band of volunteers? It is Johnson & Johnson, which is usually careful to tend its own public image as a carer for the hurt and vulnerable.
These are the folks who Band-Aid your children's cuts, soothe your wounds and powder your baby's bottom.
So when Johnson & Johnson filed suit last week against the American Red Cross for becoming too free-wheeling with that red cross, you can imagine the shivers that went through the company's public relations team.
The fact that Johnson & Johnson sued anyway shows how completely its lawyers and executives believed they needed to sue.
"We were very, very reluctant to take this step," said John Crisan, general counsel for Johnson & Johnson's consumer group.
"We tried for many months to get some engagement from the Red Cross" on the issue, to no avail.
First, let's be clear. The company isn't asking the Red Cross to eliminate its logo or change its name.
Johnson & Johnson only wants the organisation to stop selling use of the emblem to companies that are slapping it on products such as nail clippers, humidifiers and, yes, first-aid kits.
The Red Cross and Johnson & Johnson can legally use the Red Cross trademark. The two set boundaries a century ago as to which one of them could use it for what, says the company.
Johnson & Johnson can use it commercially; the Red Cross gets dibs on its use for disaster relief and public-safety work.
Both use the emblem on first-aid kits they produce, but only in recent years has the Red Cross been selling those kits in retail outlets.
And more recently, it has been selling emblem rights to companies for a variety of products.
That is what upset Johnson & Johnson.
"It doesn't like the fact that we are working with commercial partners to put products in stores to help people prepare for a disaster or basic health and safety needs," Everson said.
But some of those products aren't likely to go into the average home-disaster preparedness kit.
The All-in-One Bathing Brush and the Deluxe Grooming Kit are baby products sold by the Learning Curve, and both sport bright red crosses and the brand name the American Red Cross.
Johnson & Johnson started seeing more and more such items sharing store shelves with its products.
Under federal law, the company couldn't sit still without jeopardising its hold on the symbol.
"If you are not seen as actively policing your trademark, you could lose it," says Frederick Mostert, former president of the International Trademark Association.
The mark could turn up on just about anyone's products, diminishing its meaning and its value for Johnson & Johnson.
If it could not negotiate a compromise, the company had no choice but to sue, Mostert said.
Crisan says Johnson &Johnson tried to persuade the group to stop marketing the emblem time and again. The American Red Cross took that as mere "sabre rattling", the relief organisation said.
Johnson & Johnson keeps emphasising its continuing support for the Red Cross and its hopes to continue its partnership.
But the Red Cross is using its own humanitarian reputation to bludgeon the company as a mean-spirited money-grubber.
"This is an important organisation, a part of an international movement," Everson said. "It's respected all over the world."
He said the Red Cross made US$2 million from these licences last year.
All that money was used for disaster relief and emergency preparedness missions.
Johnson & Johnson, on the other hand, made US$11 billion in profit last year.
All the Red Cross wanted to do with this licensing, said Everson, was "help Americans be ready for health and safety needs or for a catastrophe, a Katrina or a 9/11".
Everson is right in saying that the Red Cross is widely admired and nonprofit, while Johnson & Johnson is a money-maker.
Whether the company will prevail on the legal issues is hard to tell.
But if it wants to keep what it claims as its 100-year-old exclusive right to use the mark commercially, it had to either negotiate a compromise or sue.
The Red Cross left it with only that one option.
And with that comes a Tylenol headache for the company's PR team. Bloomberg
