Brandtree

Territorial rights

Ownership of a brand that is limited to specific countries.

Trademarks are national. A company can own a brand in one country and have no claim to it in another, and the same name can belong to unrelated companies in different markets.

The clearest examples in consumer goods: Corona belongs to AB InBev everywhere except the United States, where Constellation Brands holds perpetual rights following a required divestiture. Persil belongs to Henkel across continental Europe and North America and to Unilever in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France. Budweiser has been litigated between the American brewer and the Czech Budějovický Budvar for over a century. In each case there is no single right answer to who owns the brand, only an answer per territory.

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