Bonjour! Itâs Nancy here â from the soon-to-be world famous pop group Nancy and the Meerkats!
After our first record âPut Your Paws Upâ became a massive hit, weâre off on a huge tour of the UK!
We havenât quite made it to stadium status yet â some of the venues are more Weeny than Wembley â but Iâm going to be letting you know whatâs been going on each day in my journal for Fun Kids!
Weâre nearly half way through the tour now and today we had a break to listen to someone else singing for a change â at a cool choir competition in Harrow!
The choir were magnifique â although not quite as good as my singing!
Apparently a very famous kind of choir was invented right here in Harrow called a Glee Club!
Now Iâve heard of fleas but donât know anything about glees!
According to Big Joe, a glee is an old fashioned kind of song. Itâs very short and is sung by a group of people. It used to originally be just male voices but then also female or mixed voices.
Glee Clubs were very popular in the UK in the 1800s but they fell out of fashion and arenât really around much today â although you still get them in American colleges!
So I decided we should try and bring Glee Clubs back to the UK!
I had an idea of creating our own and calling it Nancyâs Barkalong Song Club! We could get everyone singing all the tunes from our show!
Big Joe thought it was a great idea and so he went off to apply for a trade mark and register the name and I set about finding some singers!
It was all going really well but then I saw on the internet that someone had set up a rival club called Nancy and the Meerkats Barkalong Pong Club!
I bet you can guess who the owner was⊠yep, that festering feline Kitty Perry again!
She really is determined to spoil things isnât she? And all the songs were really mean!
Itâs a good thing we own the trade mark to the name Nancy and the Meerkats as Big Joe pointed out it means Kitty Perry canât use our name or our songs â even to be mean â without us agreeing to it as we own the copyright! Oui! Oui!
What is a trade mark?
A trade mark is a sign which can distinguish your goods and services from those of your competitors.
A trade mark allows you to take legal action against anyone who uses your brand without your permission, put the Âź symbol next to your brand â to show that itâs yours and warn others against using it â and to sell and license your brand.
And weâve registered the name of the song club too! That means new names have to be different enough so that people wonât be confused!
Big Joe says she can have her own singing club but itâs very likely sheâll have to come up with a totally different name!
I think she should call it Kitty Perryâs Very Hairy Club!
Listen to this episode of Nancy and the Meerkats belowâŠ
And if you want to get really creative, make sure you check out how to protect your cracking ideas! Click here to find out more!
Nancy and the Meerkats is supported by the Intellectual Property Office.
Click here to find out more!
