WE HAVE BEEN FORCED TO CHANGE OUR NAME - THE IPSB NO MORE!

BARBARIANS FC FORCE INDEPENDENT & PREP SCHOOLS BARBARIANS TO CHANGE NAME

The Independent & Prep Schools Barbarians will become the Independent Schools Rugby Football Club from this season onwards.

In 2010 the Barbarian FC (BFC) started legal proceedings against the Independent & Prep Schools Barbarians (IPSB) regarding intellectual property rights infringements over the use of the term ‘Barbarians’ and our use of the website www.barbarians.org.uk. The BFC were concerned that we were undermining their corporate identity and were passing ourselves off as being associated with the BFC for our benefit and commercial gain.

The full history of these issues can be found below but essentially the outcome is that the Barbarian FC have banned the IPSB, a club dedicated to promoting the game amongst children for the benefit of the great game of rugby as a whole, from using the term ‘Barbarians’ in their name and to describe the style of rugby and ethos that we wish pass on to our players.

The ban has been forthcoming despite what we consider the clear facts that we are a non-profit making organisation, run by volunteer school masters and rugby enthusiasts set up to provide opportunities for talented rugby players, who due to the nature of their schooling are often precluded from taking up the opportunities provided by the RFU and Academy structures. The idea behind the organisation was and is to provide these opportunities for the benefit of the game in general and to try to turn back the enormous tide of good rugby players that leave the game after finishing school.

The term ‘Barbarian’ was chosen purely to describe the style of rugby that we wished our boys to play, i.e. fast, open rugby played with the ball in hand. We wished to reaffirm the wonderful game that rugby can be; in a time when even at school level the pressure to win can lead to tight, prescriptive patterns of play. The IPSB’s desire was for the boys to be given the opportunity to have fun playing the game, take the emphasis away from winning and to literally put the ball back in their hands!

This was also despite the fact that the IPSB considered that we had been given permission to use ‘Barbarians’ after Roger Uttley (our President) sought permission to use the term for the team for our first game at Rugby School in 2006. The BFC line on this was that this was only granted for that one game.

After protracted discussions the legal proceedings were dropped as long as we agreed to sign an extensive licensing agreement which restricted and controlled our use of the term ‘Barbarians’. We were also required to hand over our only valuable asset, apart of course from the principles and goals behind our operation, our website http://www.barbarians.org.uk/.

We very much desired that this would be the end of the matter and our volunteers especially hoped that we could now get on with our key aim of getting our boys playing a high standard of rugby and providing them with opportunities for the betterment of rugby in general.

Alas this was not to be the case. The IPSB believe that the extensive and excellent publicity that we received surrounding us being the first UK side to tour Zimbabwe in 16 years stimulated the BFC into further action. As per our agreement we always very carefully referred to ourselves as the IPSB. However at the start of the tour as is always possible with media not directly controlled by an organisation, we were in some articles referred to by the abbreviation ‘Barbarians’. We moved quickly to correct this amongst the press and by a few days into the tour we were universally referred to by our correct name. However, by this stage we had noticed, via a posting on a Zimbabwean news blog that the BFC had picked up on this and were concerned.

An assurance was sent via email from Zimbabwe from the Chairman, Chris Terry, saying that all was being done to abide by the license agreement regarding the use of the name and that to be honest the ISB were looking to benefit themselves from the very positive publicity and good feeling the tour generated in Zimbabwe, rather than having that benefit attributed to the BFC. However, it seems that the concerns remained as in late September after receiving no reply to the email we received formal legal notification that our licence was being terminated with 6 months notice.

This gave us the choice to either fight the BFC decision, an impossibility given that we are an unfunded and currently unsponsored organisation run by school masters and dedicated rugby enthusiasts who give up their time free of charge, or to accept a name change, thus we have had to follow the name change route.

We have the greatest respect for the BFC and its original principles; indeed the greatest try ever scored in rugby was scored in the Barbarian black and white. However we are saddened that the IPSB failed to convince the BFC of its good intentions for the benefit of rugby as whole and that things have ended up as they have. All we wanted to do was to make a difference to the great game that is rugby!

For more information please contact:

Chris Terry – chairman@isrugby.org

Chairman – Independent Schools Rugby Football Club