LEGO built an eight-metre World Cup trophy in Rockefeller Plaza. Everyone applauded the experiential marketing. Almost nobody noticed the part that made it legal.
Three licenses in one activation
The trophy design is a protected work and a registered sign belonging to the tournament organizer. Reproducing it at any scale requires permission. The tournament name and emblem, if referenced, are separate trademarks with their own license terms. And the location itself carries usage rights that had to be cleared with the venue.
Any one of those missing turns a celebrated campaign into a legal problem in public.
What license negotiations actually cover
Scope of use, territory, duration, whether images of the installation can be used in advertising afterwards, whether merchandise can be sold, who owns the photographs, and what happens if the brand is criticised while the activation is live.
The lesson at any scale
Experiential marketing that features someone else intellectual property is a contract exercise first and a creative exercise second. Get the license before the build, and make sure it covers the content you plan to publish afterwards, which is where most agreements fall short.
The mechanics of a licence here
A licence works only within what the licensor actually owns. For a trademark that means the Nice classes on the registration; for the design of an object it means a valid industrial design registration, which lasts five years from filing and renews for successive equal periods up to twenty-five (article 78 of the Mexican Industrial Property Law). For the artwork, copyright protects it from creation whether registered or not (article 162 of the Mexican Federal Copyright Law).
A product like this is normally all three at once, and a licence drafted over only one of them leaves the licensee exposed on the others.
Two formalities decide the rest. Licences of copyright must be in writing or they are null by operation of law, and every transfer is onerous and temporary (article 30). Where no term is stated, five years is presumed (article 33). Put the term in the document.