Create Brand Licensing Network

You have a brand and want to build brand awareness by allowing freelancers to use it to distribute the products or services it is associated with. 

In this case, the brand license can allow you to create value and accelerate your growth by creating a distribution network.  

The trademark license is a simple contract in its definition : the owner of a trademark allows it to be used by another company that will exploit it. In return, the contract provides for a brand royalty.  

But the license agreement can be complicated at will to precisely frame the terms of use of the brand.  

This supervision is essential : it will alone guarantee respect for the positioning of the brand and therefore for the image of the brand in the eyes of the customers attached to it.  

The brand licensing agreement is an essential tool of the customer experience : it ensures the control of the brand’s operating conditions and thus guarantees their homogeneity. 

Steps to creating a brand licensing network
 

 We draw up numerous brand licensing agreements, either for industrial customers or for customers who are distributors or service providers.  

We know what we’re talking about, have proven methods for building brand licensing networks, and are familiar with benchmarks in your industry. 

The brand licensing  agreement  addresses strategic issues for your network: 
 

• it must translate your distribution organisation; 
   
• it must organise the security of your income (brand royalties, margins on supplies or supplier referencing income); 
   
• it must protect your brands, your data and the perimeter of your network; 
   
• it must integrate the dimension of the market and competition law, to protect you from compliance risks. 
   

GOUACHE Avocats’ approach to drafting trademark licensing agreements is simple: 
  

• (i) the brand licensing  agreement is a technique for organizing your distribution: we are interested first of all in you, your business, the way you want to organize your relations with your distributors. 
   For this, we listen to you and have designed exclusive digital tools to help you in your reflection and guide you in your choices. We are with you. We welcome you to discuss with you your organisational choices, the choices to be made and help you decide by sharing our benchmarks and our reflections. 
   
• (ii) the clauses of the trademark license agreement must be clear and easily understandable, both for your future licensees, who must understand the consideration and the reason, and by the judge who will be responsible for deciding the dispute to which the contract could give rise: this is to reduce the judge’s power of interpretation, which is a source of insecurity for companies. For these reasons, we have used legal design techniques to further improve the presentation of our contracts and their accessibility, without giving up any of our contractual management tools.
   
• (iii) the drafting of the clauses of the trademark license agreement is worked out scientifically to ensure the greatest legal certainty: we have in-house clinicians, based on our significant experience in distribution litigation and on a systematic analysis of case law (weekly cabinet review); these clauses follow a validation process involving a law professor. 
   

The quality of your brand license agreement, fully customized, will directly depend on : 
  

• the level of control of your network (product image, price homogeneity, scope of points of sale)  
   
• valuing the network. 
    

The license agreement makes it possible to precisely frame the terms of distribution of a product or service, as long as the licensor has a trademark right.