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Design Innovation

British Design Initiative accuses British Industrial Design Association of hijacking brand in legal dispute

By Angela Haggerty, Reporter

August 15, 2014 | 6 min read

The year-old British Industrial Design Association (BIDA) has been accused of hijacking the British Design Innovation brand and breaching licensing rules in a bitter legal dispute.

Dispute: Maxine Horn claims her BDI Ltd company is owed money

According to a report released by British Design Initiative Ltd – the company which licensed the BDI brand and assets to spin-off organisation British Design Innovation (BDInno) in 2005 – the business reneged on a revised license agreement signed by the Board in April 2011 before it was eventually rebranded as BIDA in 2013, without consultation with the licensor.

The spat began after the appointment of new BDInno chairman Gus Desbarats, founder and non-executive chairman of design firm Alloy, in 2010 and the appointment of new director Phil Gray, founder of Quadro Design (which was acquired by Sagentia last year).

The report claims that BDInno CEO and founder Maxine Horn – who, as founder BDI Ltd was also the licensor of the assets - resigned from the member organisation in 2010 shortly after the appointments over “undermining behaviour” and relations quickly began to deteriorate. She remained in control of the licencing body BDI Ltd.

Furthermore, the report alleges that a contract with an unnamed major retailer to create a design quality accreditation system was negotiated through the BDInno brand in 2012, but a resulting £100,000 contract for work was split between Desbarats’ Alloy and Gray’s Quadro companies.

However, Desbarats has refuted BDI Ltd’s version of events and claimed the re-brand was a decision fully supported by the organisation’s members in response to a “natural” shift of focus within BDI to industrial design, although neither Gray nor Desbarats could respond to queries over work carried out for the retailer because of a confidentiality agreement.

“We had hoped Maxine Horn would get on using the BDI brand in any way she sees fit,” Desbarats said. “We call on her to get on with her life and to allow us a volunteer board to get on with running the organisation for the benefit of our members. We wish her all the best.”

Desbarats told The Drum that the licensing agreement with BDI Ltd was terminated after Horn’s BDI Ltd served licencee BDInno with a notice of a breach. However in a contradiction, director Phil Gray told The Drum it was in fact BDInno that served a notice of termination on the licensing agreement, not Horn, although he couldn’t recall when.

“The agreement was terminated, we gave due notice of the termination of the agreement,” he said. “We rebranded the organisation as the British Industrial Design Association. We gave notice that the licence agreement that was originally set up was no longer valid in terms of what it was we were seeking to do as being a member-centric organisation.

“We polled the members, went through due process and we had formal annual general meetings to make sure the membership were completely comfortable with what we were seeking to do.

“It’s an immensely irritating situation to be in when you give something back. What we have created now is a much more robust member organisation.”

However, Horn told The Drum that the board of BIDA had been uncooperative with requests for information and left her with no option but to publish the details publicly in the report in order to allow members to come to their own conclusions. She claims she is owed “circa £40,000” in unpaid licensing fees.

“We have tried extensively to get things resolved out of court, even get round the table and have a respectful discussion, but right from the beginning the attitude has been pretty much ‘it’s none of your business, we can do what we like’,” she said.

“They’re affronted by the licensor questioning the transactions that were secured under the brand. It’s hard to deal with people who have managed to convince themselves that what they did was the right thing, irrespective of what anybody else says.”

Horn claims that despite BIDA’s position that the BDInno brand has returned to BDI Ltd following the end of the licensing agreement, BIDA has continued to trade on the name of BDInno and BDI Ltd – for example, by the claim on its website that it was set up in 1993.

“What I want is fairness,” Horn said. “At my expense they have hugely advantaged themselves and hugely disadvantaged me, and trashed 20 years of my work.

“They’ve destroyed the brand beyond recognition and they owe me circa £40,000, although they refute it.

“They’ve got to accept that they do need to make it right. The way to do it is just be decent, honest and fair.”

When questioned by The Drum, Desbarats said the website’s claim that BIDA was founded in 1993 was “factually incorrect” and would be updated.

In a statement, the BIDA board said: "The Board of BIDA regrets that Ms Horn has, once again, chosen to make public accusations of improper behaviour against individual board members, member organisations and the BIDA board collectively.

"The individuals and organisations mentioned are bound by non-disclosure agreements so no direct factual rebuttal can be conducted in public.

"However many of the document’s accusations are almost two years old, there has been ample time for all of them to be fully and properly reviewed by the BIDA board and independent BIDA members as well as BIDA’s legal and accounting advisers, all of who are in total agreement that the accusations are groundless: there has been no improper activity nor in fact any activity that hasn’t been totally dedicated to benefitting the collective interests of the membership."

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