When it emerged in January that Jacques Patriaque, co-founder and CEO of Annual Boylesque Festival Vienna had trademarked the word “boylesque” in 2014, many an eyebrow was raised.
London Burlesque Festival producer Chaz Royal’s plans to launch his own London Boylesque Festival this year hit the buffers when he received a cease and desist letter from a lawyer representing Patriaque. Royal reacted in typically bullish form with a publicity campaign across his many Facebook pages and starting up his own petition under his real name Mark Henderson.
Patriaque responded with an open letter to the burlesque community, calling the trademark move “merely a way for me to protect my festival, which I have worked so hard on and I consider my baby.” He also commented that “what I don’t really understand is that one would go public and even viral, thus creating a shit storm with a problem right away, rather than confronting the person directly.”
If Patriaque intended his peace offering to quell the “shit storm”, he may need to think again. Royal stepped up his campaign the next day, sending a fresh message to all on the LBF mailing list to sign up to his petition. He also reproduced on the petition the letter he received from Patriaque’s lawyers.
Until now, it has been a battle of words. Yesterday marked a new and worrying turn of events when a performer was turned away after applying to Royal’s London Boylesque Festival.
Gonzalo De Laverga – who has a routine which rather brilliantly uses Tom Lehrer’s Masochism Tango as a backing track – had already applied to appear at the Viennese event. Royal rejected the Italian’s application on the grounds of exclusivity – something clearly not mentioned when he advertised for dancers on Facebook eight days ago. As far as Royal is concerned, anyone taking part in his rival’s event is not welcome to appear at his own. This is what he told De Laverga:
“Sorry but we won’t be booking anyone who is performing at the Vienna Boylesque Fest. It’s a hard decision but a direct conflict of interest for us, as they are STILL holding the Boylesque Trademark and trying to enforce it with their lawyer.
“…There is no war from me. It’s just bad business that someone wants to own boylesque and try to target LBF specifically and lie to the scene about it. It’s not personal. I just like to keep my events exclusive to people who support us when there’s bigger issues at hand. Sorry”
In a nutshell, it seems that after decrying long and hard his rival’s anti-competitive practices, the UK producer has instigated his own. Quite who the winner will be in this tussle of the tassels is unclear but we’re betting it wont be the performers or the paying audiences.
So basically its only a biased competition from the London Festival. You can only compete with those who dont compete elsewhere…Now there is a competition you really want to win. not.
If I was a performer, I would be avoiding Royal’s festival like the plague, because a producer who punishes performers over a dispute he’s having with someone else is not someone anyone with any intelligence about their career should be working with.
As for the dispute over the trademark, that was already owned once before by someone else before Patriaque applied for it, and with NO comment at all about it from Chaz Royal back then.
In fact, all of this smells to me of nothing more than a man who is angry he got a ‘cease and desist letter’. A letter that Patriaque has already said was a mistake on his lawyer’s part, and even followed it up by saying nobody in the community will ever be denied the use of the word ‘Boylesque’. Including Royal himself.
But, even after Patriaque informed everyone of the reality of the trademark (basically nothing will change, except it is now protected from people who would NOT have the community’s best interests in mind), Royal insisted on starting a vendetta against Patriaque anyway, and continuing with it. Why? Because he’s a bully.
In fact, as far as I can see, the only threat to the Boylesque community in all of this is the presence of someone like Royal. A man with no ‘community spirit’ whatsoever, as he is now proving with his constant attempts to destroy it.
And if Royal was ever to own that trademark (which anyone with two functioning brain cells can see is his motive here), if I was anyone in the Boylesque community, I’d be frantically thinking of a new term to use, as I know what the consequence would be if HE got his hands on it.
All in all, nothing more than a temper tantrum by an overgrown child. Move on. Nothing to see here.
As a UK event promoter will I be faced with only being able to promote performers from either the London or Vienna Boylesque Festival in case I get a cease and desist from Chaz? If so then Vienna sounds far more prestigious, sorry London Boylesque Festival performers you’ll just have to take it up with Mr. Royal once he’s finished milking the minor incident for all it’s worth to himself and his wallet.
What I don’t understand is how this is all being misconstrued? From what it appears Vienna Boylesque Fest placed a trademark on Boylesque and served LBF with legal threats. Royal is just trying to protect his efforts. Leave the man alone.
Lady V, no, Vienna Boylesque Fesitval did not serve LBF with legal threats. That was a mistake by their lawyer acting alone. The founder of VBF (Jacques Patriaque) immediately wrote to Royal and told him there was no lawsuit, and there would never be a lawsuit, and he could use the term ‘boylesque’ any time he wanted, as could anyone else in the community.
Royal, however, chose to ignore it. Threw an enormous hissy fit, and took his overblown story to the media just to stir up trouble. Then again, that is what this man seems to do. Who knows why, as it certainly never makes him look good.