Feature By Sara-Jayne Clover Coca-Cola: ensuring that it’s always the real thing Iconic bottles, secret recipes, billion-dollar brands – catching the eye of Coca-Cola. Her experiences at the beverage giant they are all in a day’s work when you head up the IP have proved all that she hoped for and more: “It’s literally a dream job to work for this brand and for this company; sometimes I pinch team at The Coca-Cola Company. Danise Lopes reveals myself,” she enthuses. In 2008, after several years in London looking how she manages the IP challenges, and more, for the after the company’s European trademark practice, Lopes moved to world’s biggest beverage provider the Atlanta headquarters to head up the global trademark team. However, in 2010 Coca-Cola decided to restructure its IP function and consolidate the trademark and patent departments, which until then had operated as separate divisions. Lopes was anointed the If one were to speculate as to the second most widely understood new head of intellectual property, a role which she has embraced term in the world, after the ubiquitous ‘OK’, one might perhaps be with gusto – although it has not been without its challenges. tempted to take a guess at likely candidates such as ‘yes’, or perhaps “I won’t lie to you – it’s not been a walk in the park,” she concedes. ‘hi’. In fact, however, this honour belongs not to a word at all, but to “When you have a trademark background and you then have to a brand: the mighty Coca-Cola. start dealing with highly technical patent specifications and other Invented in 1886 by Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton, Coca- patent filing issues, you have to hit the ground running, so I spent Cola quickly established itself as a global phenomenon and has a lot of time with my patent counsel in the early days in this role never looked back. Over the years the company has expanded its to get me up to speed.” As well as drawing on the experience of portfolio of beverages to include, among many others, Fanta, Sprite colleagues, Lopes was able to avail of a formal company-wide and the world’s favourite diet drink, Diet Coke. Fast forward to 2012 education programme which offers a vast number of courses, and Coca-Cola products are available in more than 200 countries including modules on IP law and practice – from ‘Trademarks 101’ worldwide, with 1.8 billion units consumed daily. The organisation to very detailed technical patent training. Despite all the hard graft behind the success of these products is, of course, The Cola-Cola that uniting the teams has involved, Lopes is adamant that the move Company, a Fortune 100 business which reported profits of $2.31 was a shrewd one, giving the company a truly 360-degree view of IP billion in the third quarter of 2012. matters. “When you launch a new product, you look at a myriad of Underpinning this global supremacy is an indomitable brand possible IP issues. If you take the Coca-Cola product, for example, we identity: in 2012 the Coca-Cola brand topped Interbrand’s Best had a patent on the bottle, we have design and trademark protection Global Brands list for the 13th consecutive year, valued at an eye- watering $77.8 billion. Leading the team responsible for safeguarding this precious asset is head of intellectual property Danise Lopes. Originally from South Africa, Lopes qualified as a lawyer and worked in private practice in her home country before upping sticks for the United Kingdom, where she continued to focus on trademark issues. She then made the move in-house, taking up a position with multinational consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser. Here she witnessed first hand the interplay between business and intellectual property, and was instantly converted. “Being in-house, you are able to see the whole line of project development and are involved at every stage, and I love that,” explains Lopes. “In private practice, you’re not involved until the end of the process and you are not necessarily in tune with the business goals – only the legal risks.” IP united Committed to this new career path, Lopes swiftly ascended the Danise Lopes, ranks to become head of trademarks at Reckitt Benckiser, before head of intellectual property 10 World Trademark Review February/March 2013 www.WorldTrademarkReview.com for the bottle, trademark protection on the COCA-COLA mark and, in IP law is a full-time job for any practitioner. When you happen of course, trade secret protection for the formula. There is so much to head up the IP division of a multinational with more than 500 synergy between trademarks, marketing patents and innovation that brands (not to mention 45,000 trademarks), you need a bright, it makes sense for it all to be under the same leadership.” committed team of people around you – and around the world – to stay on top of things. Fortunately, Lopes has just that. IP attorneys Copy Cokes are based in the company’s Atlanta headquarters and internationally The bottle to which Lopes refers is the classic hourglass ‘contour’ in corporate offices, and it is a vital part of her job to ensure that shape designed by Indiana’s Root Glass Company in 1916. Tasked communication channels are clear and best practices are shared with creating a bottle that could be easily distinguished from regularly. During weekly team calls, counsel from all corners of the others, even in the dark, the company came up with something globe report on the latest local IP developments and outline their so distinctive that it fast achieved iconic status – most famously potential implications for Coca-Cola. As an international organisation celebrated in Andy Warhol’s Pop Art series of paintings in the 1960s. from its early days, Coca-Cola has long had the right structures in But with fame come imitators, and it is the job of Lopes and her place to ensure that this process can run smoothly. “Keeping our team to ensure that their star design enjoys bulletproof protection. central team in Atlanta connected with the international teams is “When it comes to protecting our intellectual property, we like essential,” states Lopes, “and it’s something we’ve been doing for a to have as many arrows in our quiver as possible,” she explains. number of years, so it’s a very well-oiled machine.” This means that as well as design rights, the bottle is also covered Lopes also encourages her teams to connect in person as often as by trademark protection wherever possible. “The Coca-Cola contour time and distance permit. “Even in this electronic age, when you can glass bottle has been registered in a very large number of countries, do video calls, face-to-face contact is still critical,” she observes. And but 3D registration is still very much in its infancy compared to how these efforts to forge strong lines of communication also extend long trademark protection has been around,” continues Lopes. “In a to those external partners who assist in protecting Coca-Cola’s number of countries, little to no case law surrounding 3D trademark intellectual property. At the annual meeting of the International protection exists. But we have been successful in many countries Trademark Association, Lopes and her team get together with and in some cases we have been the first company to secure this outside counsel from more than 200 countries to update them on protection.” For instance, in 2008 Coca-Cola was the first company to all of Coca-Cola’s latest IP issues and get the lie of the land from successfully obtain 3D trademark protection for a container in Japan. their respective jurisdictions. However, even with such a daunting armoury in place, The criteria followed when selecting outside counsel can differ infringement is still an inevitability for a brand of Coca-Cola’s dramatically, depending on location, explains Lopes: “We practise stature. When this happens, Lopes and her team confer with their in many countries where there are so many big law firms to choose colleagues and evaluate each instance on its individual merits from; but then there are other countries in which we operate where before deciding what course of action to take. “We work very closely there is only one trademark firm and it works not only for you, but with our outside counsel, as well as the Coca-Cola IP counsel in the also for your competitors.” But what all of Coca-Cola’s counsel share various business groups, to decide whether we’re going to pursue is a dedication to working at the cutting edge of the law and a clear someone through litigation or through negotiation,” she explains understanding of the company’s specific requirements: “The large And just as it will not tolerate infringement of its own intellectual pool of diverse outside counsel that we work with are all trained in property, Coca-Cola takes pains to respect the rights of others. our needs, business goals and fundamental processes.” “It goes both ways,” continues Lopes. “The Coca-Cola Company has a policy not knowingly to infringe upon the rights of others, The Coke challenge and when others infringe our marks we consider all the possible Indeed, this international scope of her role is something that Lopes remedies. Sometimes we do take action; sometimes we settle particularly enjoys. “That’s one of the fascinating aspects of my job,” matters and sometimes we don’t – it depends on the circumstances.” she says.