Wellington County is taking steps to protect its brand, including trademarking the name for its jobs and housing web portal: “Live and Work Wellington.”
“The County of Wellington would like to protect the trademark ‘Live and Work Wellington’ to ensure that it is available to the county to use as it wishes in all of its relevant publications and programs,” stated communications manager Andrea Ravensdale in a report to the county’s economic development committee.
“It also wishes to put third parties on notice of the fact that ‘Live and Work Wellington’ is a trademark owned by the county and should not be adopted by others.”
An Official Mark application was filed by the county on Dec. 9, 2016 and approved in February.
An Official Mark is a unique type of trademark available to public authorities in Canada and provides a broader scope of protection than regular trademarks.
Ravensdale’s report, presented to Wellington County council on Feb. 23, notes variations of the phrase “Live and Work” have been used by member municipalities within the county.
In 2015, the Towns of Minto and Erin, along with the Townships of Centre Wellington and Wellington North, created their own job and housing web portal, called www.liveandworkwellington.ca. Each municipality also created a portal using “live and work” followed by their own municipal name or abbreviation for their own municipal web portals.
Ravensdale said the portal was always intended to be a county-wide project, but the four municipalities wanted to move more quickly than the county was planning.
“It was always going to be a county initiative but these things do take time and we wanted to build it into our county website … local municipalities that do have resources in terms of economic development officers decided to go on and do this in the interim until the county has been able to get things up to speed,” Ravensdale told the Advertiser.
At the January county council meeting, Centre Wellington Mayor Kelly Linton expressed concern that member municipalities would have to get permission from the county to utilize their own “Live and Work” promotions. Council referred the matter back to staff and the economic development committee for clarification.
Committee chair councillor George Bridge told the Advertiser the approach has been revised to ensure local municipalities only need to obtain permission to use the “Live and Work Wellington” mark; they are free to use “Live and Work” followed by their own municipal name.
“In order to ensure consistent branding and that it maintains control over the use of its Official Mark,” the report states the county will require municipalities wishing to link to the county’s “Live and Work Wellington” portal or use the “Live and Work Wellington” Official Mark, to do so with the consent of the county and in accordance with its use guidelines.
Consistent message
The report recommends the county arrange for the domain names liveandworkwellington.com and live andworkwellington.ca to be transferred to it as the sites were registered without the county’s permission.
“If they want to be connected to our job and housing portal, which they do, we just need to have a licensing agreement so they’re using our brand correctly … so that it’s consistent across the board,” said Ravensdale.
The county is recommending municipalities arrange for all of the domain name registrations that consist of “Live and Work” followed by a municipality name or abbreviation thereof to be transferred from the current owner, Glen Hall, the creator of the websites associated with the domain names, to the appropriate municipality.
Ravensdale said the process of returning the Live and Work Wellington domain name from Hall’s ownership to the county is in the final stages and won’t cost the county anything other than “administrative” charges.
“We needed to get the domain name back … they didn’t have any issue giving Live and Work Wellington back … at the end of the day they can keep their own sites and the county will have their own and it will benefit all seven,” said Lawson.
“We’re not asking the others to shut down their sites. They may find they don’t need them anymore because we’re duplicating efforts, but the other three municipalities that were part of the side project are now part of Live and Work Wellington.”
County council approved the economic development committee’s recommendation to arrange for the transfer of the domain names to the county; and directed county communications staff to work with law firm Miller Thomson LLP to create a license agreement for all seven municipalities to sign if they wish to link to the county’s web portal and/or use the “Live and Work Wellington” Official Mark.
