Do you really want to hurt me?
14 Feb 2025
UK tabloid newspaper reports (including this in The Sun) highlighting the ongoing financial and legal issues surrounding Boy George and the iconic new wave 1980s band he founded, Culture Club, suggest he could apparently lose control of Culture Club related trade marks – and even his own name, which he had also registered as a trade mark – because he used them as security for loans.
However, the real story about who may end up owning various bits of the Culture Club IP is rather more complex, and will probably require the services of a good lawyer to disentangle…
But to provide some background: the band’s management company, Mishpocha (not, as reported in the tabloids, Mispocha) Touring, went into administration in 2023.
The latest report from the administrators for Mishpocha Touring, filed with Companies House in January 2025, and which the news reports heavily rely on, shows that the company owes $3.1m to US music and entertainment investment company MEP Capital, which it had got a loan from. Incidentally, other creditors are owed £11.1m, according to the Administrator’s report.
According to Companies House records, MEP does indeed have a fixed charge over the company’s IP, which probably means it will be able to take control of copyright material owned by Mishpocha Touring.
However, whether MEP can seize trade marks in Boy George and Culture Club is a different matter. A check of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s trade mark database shows these are owned by a separate company, CC Trademark Ltd, and have been used as collateral to borrow money from a US bank, Wilmington Trust, which, according to Companies House, has got a fixed charge over the Culture Club and Boy George trade marks.
To complicate matters further, the IPO trade mark database shows that the trade marks for both the singer and his band name expired in December 2024.
Usually, the person or company that registers a trade mark has a priority grace period of six months during which time they can re-register the TMs; however, in the case of Boy George and Culture Club, it may be that, if Wilmington Trust can claim the TMs, it will be able to re-register them instead.
Leaving aside the issue of the TMs for now, who owns other rights in the band’s music is complicated, due to the nature of the music industry and existing rights licensing deals.
For example, in 2019, New York-based music investment company Primary Wave acquired rights to an undisclosed share of Culture Club’s publishing and master recording income stream in what Primary Wave said at the time was ‘a multi-million dollar deal’. Primary Wave also said it would be seeking to buy other publishing rights for the Culture Club music catalogue from music giant BMG; but that appears not to have happened. Certainly, BMG still seems to be marketing Culture Club on its website (as of February 2025).
If Boy George does indeed lose the right to use his own name as a trade mark, then he will join a growing band of famous people who have similarly lost the trade mark rights to their name, including designer Karen Millen and beauty brand founder Bobbi Brown. And there are many other famous names which are now valuable trade marks and which have become separated from any real life person – Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, for example.
UK tabloid newspaper reports (including this in The Sun) highlighting the ongoing financial and legal issues surrounding Boy George and the iconic new wave 1980s band he founded, Culture Club, suggest he could apparently lose control of Culture Club related trade marks – and even his own name, which he had also registered as a trade mark – because he used them as security for loans.
However, the real story about who may end up owning various bits of the Culture Club IP is rather more complex, and will probably require the services of a good lawyer to disentangle…
But to provide some background: the band’s management company, Mishpocha (not, as reported in the tabloids, Mispocha) Touring, went into administration in 2023.
The latest report from the administrators for Mishpocha Touring, filed with Companies House in January 2025, and which the news reports heavily rely on, shows that the company owes $3.1m to US music and entertainment investment company MEP Capital, which it had got a loan from. Incidentally, other creditors are owed £11.1m, according to the Administrator’s report.
According to Companies House records, MEP does indeed have a fixed charge over the company’s IP, which probably means it will be able to take control of copyright material owned by Mishpocha Touring.
However, whether MEP can seize trade marks in Boy George and Culture Club is a different matter. A check of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s trade mark database shows these are owned by a separate company, CC Trademark Ltd, and have been used as collateral to borrow money from a US bank, Wilmington Trust, which, according to Companies House, has got a fixed charge over the Culture Club and Boy George trade marks.
To complicate matters further, the IPO trade mark database shows that the trade marks for both the singer and his band name expired in December 2024.
Usually, the person or company that registers a trade mark has a priority grace period of six months during which time they can re-register the TMs; however, in the case of Boy George and Culture Club, it may be that, if Wilmington Trust can claim the TMs, it will be able to re-register them instead.
Leaving aside the issue of the TMs for now, who owns other rights in the band’s music is complicated, due to the nature of the music industry and existing rights licensing deals.
For example, in 2019, New York-based music investment company Primary Wave acquired rights to an undisclosed share of Culture Club’s publishing and master recording income stream in what Primary Wave said at the time was ‘a multi-million dollar deal’. Primary Wave also said it would be seeking to buy other publishing rights for the Culture Club music catalogue from music giant BMG; but that appears not to have happened. Certainly, BMG still seems to be marketing Culture Club on its website (as of February 2025).
If Boy George does indeed lose the right to use his own name as a trade mark, then he will join a growing band of famous people who have similarly lost the trade mark rights to their name, including designer Karen Millen and beauty brand founder Bobbi Brown. And there are many other famous names which are now valuable trade marks and which have become separated from any real life person – Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, for example.
UK tabloid newspaper reports (including this in The Sun) highlighting the ongoing financial and legal issues surrounding Boy George and the iconic new wave 1980s band he founded, Culture Club, suggest he could apparently lose control of Culture Club related trade marks – and even his own name, which he had also registered as a trade mark – because he used them as security for loans.
However, the real story about who may end up owning various bits of the Culture Club IP is rather more complex, and will probably require the services of a good lawyer to disentangle…
But to provide some background: the band’s management company, Mishpocha (not, as reported in the tabloids, Mispocha) Touring, went into administration in 2023.
The latest report from the administrators for Mishpocha Touring, filed with Companies House in January 2025, and which the news reports heavily rely on, shows that the company owes $3.1m to US music and entertainment investment company MEP Capital, which it had got a loan from. Incidentally, other creditors are owed £11.1m, according to the Administrator’s report.
According to Companies House records, MEP does indeed have a fixed charge over the company’s IP, which probably means it will be able to take control of copyright material owned by Mishpocha Touring.
However, whether MEP can seize trade marks in Boy George and Culture Club is a different matter. A check of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s trade mark database shows these are owned by a separate company, CC Trademark Ltd, and have been used as collateral to borrow money from a US bank, Wilmington Trust, which, according to Companies House, has got a fixed charge over the Culture Club and Boy George trade marks.
To complicate matters further, the IPO trade mark database shows that the trade marks for both the singer and his band name expired in December 2024.
Usually, the person or company that registers a trade mark has a priority grace period of six months during which time they can re-register the TMs; however, in the case of Boy George and Culture Club, it may be that, if Wilmington Trust can claim the TMs, it will be able to re-register them instead.
Leaving aside the issue of the TMs for now, who owns other rights in the band’s music is complicated, due to the nature of the music industry and existing rights licensing deals.
For example, in 2019, New York-based music investment company Primary Wave acquired rights to an undisclosed share of Culture Club’s publishing and master recording income stream in what Primary Wave said at the time was ‘a multi-million dollar deal’. Primary Wave also said it would be seeking to buy other publishing rights for the Culture Club music catalogue from music giant BMG; but that appears not to have happened. Certainly, BMG still seems to be marketing Culture Club on its website (as of February 2025).
If Boy George does indeed lose the right to use his own name as a trade mark, then he will join a growing band of famous people who have similarly lost the trade mark rights to their name, including designer Karen Millen and beauty brand founder Bobbi Brown. And there are many other famous names which are now valuable trade marks and which have become separated from any real life person – Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, for example.
UK tabloid newspaper reports (including this in The Sun) highlighting the ongoing financial and legal issues surrounding Boy George and the iconic new wave 1980s band he founded, Culture Club, suggest he could apparently lose control of Culture Club related trade marks – and even his own name, which he had also registered as a trade mark – because he used them as security for loans.
However, the real story about who may end up owning various bits of the Culture Club IP is rather more complex, and will probably require the services of a good lawyer to disentangle…
But to provide some background: the band’s management company, Mishpocha (not, as reported in the tabloids, Mispocha) Touring, went into administration in 2023.
The latest report from the administrators for Mishpocha Touring, filed with Companies House in January 2025, and which the news reports heavily rely on, shows that the company owes $3.1m to US music and entertainment investment company MEP Capital, which it had got a loan from. Incidentally, other creditors are owed £11.1m, according to the Administrator’s report.
According to Companies House records, MEP does indeed have a fixed charge over the company’s IP, which probably means it will be able to take control of copyright material owned by Mishpocha Touring.
However, whether MEP can seize trade marks in Boy George and Culture Club is a different matter. A check of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s trade mark database shows these are owned by a separate company, CC Trademark Ltd, and have been used as collateral to borrow money from a US bank, Wilmington Trust, which, according to Companies House, has got a fixed charge over the Culture Club and Boy George trade marks.
To complicate matters further, the IPO trade mark database shows that the trade marks for both the singer and his band name expired in December 2024.
Usually, the person or company that registers a trade mark has a priority grace period of six months during which time they can re-register the TMs; however, in the case of Boy George and Culture Club, it may be that, if Wilmington Trust can claim the TMs, it will be able to re-register them instead.
Leaving aside the issue of the TMs for now, who owns other rights in the band’s music is complicated, due to the nature of the music industry and existing rights licensing deals.
For example, in 2019, New York-based music investment company Primary Wave acquired rights to an undisclosed share of Culture Club’s publishing and master recording income stream in what Primary Wave said at the time was ‘a multi-million dollar deal’. Primary Wave also said it would be seeking to buy other publishing rights for the Culture Club music catalogue from music giant BMG; but that appears not to have happened. Certainly, BMG still seems to be marketing Culture Club on its website (as of February 2025).
If Boy George does indeed lose the right to use his own name as a trade mark, then he will join a growing band of famous people who have similarly lost the trade mark rights to their name, including designer Karen Millen and beauty brand founder Bobbi Brown. And there are many other famous names which are now valuable trade marks and which have become separated from any real life person – Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, for example.
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Inngot's online platform identifies all your intangible assets and demonstrates their value to lenders, investors, acquirers, licensees and stakeholders
Accreditations
Copyright © Inngot Limited 2019-2025. All rights reserved.
Inngot's online platform identifies all your intangible assets and demonstrates their value to lenders, investors, acquirers, licensees and stakeholders
Accreditations
Copyright © Inngot Limited 2019-2025. All rights reserved.
Inngot's online platform identifies all your intangible assets and demonstrates their value to lenders, investors, acquirers, licensees and stakeholders
Accreditations
Copyright © Inngot Limited 2019-2025. All rights reserved.