Should it be possible for a sponsor to own the team, and decide to move the team to a different High School whenever it decides, and leave the school out in the dark?
Wow, I’d love to know the story behind this one. I think that technically a sponsor doesn’t own the team, and that the team is in all actualality a partnership between the school, and all sponsors. So technically, no, I don’t think that the sponsor can do that. Want to share the story?
To answer each of the questions…
No, a sponsor should not be able to OWN a team, since a team is conncted to the school, and a school is a public institution. Private schools? - maybe.
The sponsor may decide to sponsor whoever it wishes. That’s for the sponsor to decide… so I guess if a sponsor all of a sudden leaves a team hanging and goes off to sponsor another school, then it’s ok since the sponsor is not obligated to anything (unless your team drafts contracts) permanent, though I would definitely not agree with the act and be in a state of “pissed” for a while.
I’d like to hear the story behind this too.
That’s a very interesting problem–how, might I ask, did that situation come about?
As I see it, FIRST has made no mention of “ownership” of a team–that is, the teams are by definition school clubs, rather than separate organizations, and therefore cannot be owned by anyone. For example: my school band could be sponsored by NASA, but NASA couldn’t, even if they wanted to, own the band. Therefore, NASA couldn’t move the band to another school.
The sponsor could, of course, pull out, and decide to sponsor another team–that’s fully within his rights, but it would likely not be a fantastic public relations move, seeing as how everybody at your school would find out rather quickly that you’d been ditched, in favour of someone else.
Speaking now on higher moral ground, it wouldn’t be right for any corporation to own any portion of a public school (I’ll assume it’s public)–and that includes everything from facilities to clubs. Neither is it very polite of them to “leave [you] out in the dark”, but that’s a matter for you to sort out with your sponsor, rather than an issue of corporate presence in the schools.
If no agreement can be made, and the sponsor pulls out, remember that it is very likely that your team (via the school) owns the rights to the names, insignia and other intellectual property associated with the team–so the sponsor, at another school, would certainly not be able to “assume your identity”. (Though if you were, for example, the NASA Ninnies, originally, you of course would not retain the rights to the NASA part.)
That much said, does your sponsor really want to ditch your school that badly? If so, why?
-Tristan Lall
These are figurative questions.
What if your sponsor has been sponsoring the team for 10 years, and owns all the rights to the name, logo, and all things developed by any team members for the team? What if they decided to move to another school for a few years, then another after a few more? What if they lied to you and said there would be no more team at all at any school, but continued on with a new school secretly? What if represenatives of the sponsor needed to be present every time you did something related to the team, and approve anything written about the team? What if the sponsor represenatives controlled all the meetings, and didn’t allow the High School teachers to have any say in anything? Additionally, what if your sponsor representatives are the main contacts for FIRST?
How is the reputation of a team formed? From its students, or from the number of years they have been in the program?
First off, IANAL (I am not a lawyer), so take this for what it’s worth…
Number one: I’d immediately call FIRST, and discuss the situation with them.
You really have two issues here: The team NUMBER, and the team’s NAME.
Personally, I’ve never before heard of a case of “team moving” and the sponsor taking their number with them. That seems absurd… All team numbers are ASSIGNED to the teams by FIRST. Therefore, THEY are the ones who control who gets and can use it, NOT the sponsor.
As I understand it (but could be wrong), the team number is always a part of the School. Although sponsors come and go, the team number NORMALLY stays with the originally assigned school system.
In fact, from my previous conversations with FIRST as Team Contact, current FIRST policy won’t even reassign a school’s team number when a team becomes “dormant”, just in case they ever DO “rise from the ashes” later. I registered a new team during 2002 right in the middle of the “1K team number rollover” time. RCs set to numbers over 1000 didn’t display, the rules required a display of your team number, and no one knew THEN just WHEN the new RC’s would have four digits. So out of curiousity we asked IF the new RCs didn’t make the contest, would they consider reassigning dormant team numbers under 1000 to the new teams. FIRST officially told us “no”, and cited the above reason.
Next, the current Team Contact is irrelevant. The Team Contact can EASILY be changed from an old sponsor to an “authorized school official” at ANY time with only a simple phone call to FIRST’s MIS department by the school’s administration. No sweat.
Now the team’s SLANG NAME is a whole different story! Many teams use variants of a sponsor’s name, the sponsor’s logo (etc.), ALL of which ARE copyrighted by the sponsoring company involved. (For example: Assume you were the “GM&Ms”, were sponsored by GM and M&M Candies, used some variant of either GM’s or M&M’s logo, and either GM or M&M Candies dropped sponsorship of you. I think it fairly reasonable to EXPECT a name AND a logo change…) 
However, if your names and/or logos do NOT have a direct derivative name connection with your sponsor, it gets a bit gray…
Now if the sponsor actually went to the trouble to register the name and/or the logo as Registered Trademarks of their company, then YES, you’ve got a problem. It’s probably time to choose a new name, but again talk to a lawyer first. IF NOT though, ownership may be an issue, and you MAY be able to retrieve rights to the name for the team.
Any way you look at it though, my advice is to have a school rep call FIRST right away, and lay out the problem. I’m sure THEIR legal department should be able to help answer ALL of your questions.
Good luck!
- Keith
*Originally posted by AJ Quick *
**These are figurative questions.What if your sponsor has been sponsoring the team for 10 years, and owns all the rights to the name, logo, and all things developed by any team members for the team? What if they decided to move to another school for a few years, then another after a few more? What if they lied to you and said there would be no more team at all at any school, but continued on with a new school secretly? What if represenatives of the sponsor needed to be present every time you did something related to the team, and approve anything written about the team? What if the sponsor represenatives controlled all the meetings, and didn’t allow the High School teachers to have any say in anything? Additionally, what if your sponsor representatives are the main contacts for FIRST?
**
If this relationship is so unsatisfactory to the team then it should find a new sponsor and stop complaining. If this was so bad why did the team persist for 10 years!
Overall the situation sounds like an internal team management issue and all involved should be openly dealing with it. Different people have their own ways of managing. Not all are the most student friendly. But this is not the kind of thing to air publicly.
Considering the large amount of money and time many companies put into their teams a proprietory attitude might be expected. Allowing unsupervised students to put out materials using corporate trademarks is not a wise idea. A FIRST team is a side project but their trademark is their corporate reputation.
From the above it appears that the “new school (secret)” is happy to get the sponsorship. Most teams would be grateful for 10 years of support. Perhaps demonstrating support of the new “sister” team would be more productive.
Well, GM owns our team.
I don’t have a problem with it at all. They give us a place to work, materials, access to engineers, money, and oppertunities for a job at GM in the future.
I think that the fact that we don’t have a school sponser has a lot to do with this. We draw students from over 20 schools. Therefore, we dont owe anything to a single school.
Our team fundraises, a lot. It’s not like GM hands us everything. But i do feel that GM owns our team. Without them, we wouldn’t exist.
Just some observations.
*Originally posted by magnasmific *
**I don’t have a problem with it at all. They give us a place to work, materials, access to engineers, money, and oppertunities for a job at GM in the future.I think that the fact that we don’t have a school sponser has a lot to do with this. We draw students from over 20 schools. Therefore, we dont owe anything to a single school.
**
I completely agree with this perspective. In fact, so doesn’t Dean Kamen. I believe he addressed this very issue at the Kickoff of 2001. The point he made is that it doesn’t matter how the team is organized. Some teams have no engineers, some teams have a dozen. Some teams work at a sponsor’s location, some teams work in a parent’s basement, and some teams work at the high school. Some teams have many sponsors and a single high school, and some teams have no high schools and a sponsor (and have students from a dozen high schools from all over the place).
Everybody is different… ERR all teams are different!
What is a team? A team is the students. It is not the sponsor, but it is also not the high school. While it is true that the majority of the teams operate at the high school and many are funded by the high schools, others have nothing at all to do with a particular high school.
So, as to who “owns” the team… it’s a case-by-case issue. I like to think nobody owns a team, and that it just exists as a partnership. But the numbers and names are sticky issues. But really, it’s a small unimportant segment of a large picture.
- Patrick
If there is a split between the team and the sponsor, and the two groups can’t reach an agreement, I think they would/should both have to give up the number and name of the team. Take for example a completely mythical breakup between my former team and school. Team 108 is composed of Dillard High School, Taravella High School, and Motorola. If Motorola were to decide to leave and sponsor an entirely different high school, they couldn’t legitamtely call themselves the sigmc@ts, because the SigmaC@T’s was a team comprised of us both. The same if the High School were to leave. The two have been associated with each other for so long that to continue to use that name and number would cause confusion. Even if the company or team has all legal rights to the name and logo, I would expect FIRST to insist they both pick new names and get new numbers because they are no longer the same “team”. Obviously if a sponsor or school voluntarily dropped out all togethor it would be a different matter.
There is a major difference between “Ownership” and “Partnership” and “Sponsorship”.
I know of several sponsors that change schools each year. Their intent is to start a team then move on to another school. It is hoped the school will seek “Sponsorship” and continue in FIRST.
This is both hard on the school and the company as well. I ( Mike ) see no long time value in that.
We all form “Partnerships” to build a FIRST Team. That is Students, school, engineers and corp funding.
Is there a thing as “Team Ownership”? This can be looked at many ways from many sides. FIRST assigns new numbers to new teams. This is usually a new school entering into the competition. The school is assigned the number and if the team sponsor moves on to start a new team I think the number has stayed with the existing school/team. They just have to find a new sponsor.
Please realize there are many sides to a story. Why a sponsor moves on or why a school seeks a new sponsor. This is best kept “in the family” as not to harm either school or sponsor.
*Originally posted by Wayne C. *
**If this relationship is so unsatisfactory to the team then it should find a new sponsor and stop complaining. If this was so bad why did the team persist for 10 years! **
This has only developed with-in the last year. You yourself should know being a low team number (25) that what if someone took the team from you and forced you to start all over again with team number 1500… while keeping the same students, and same coaches. We will be contacting FIRST today directly to atleast get our number back… the name, even though it developed from us, will probably need to be changed.
Having actually had to deal with ownership of a team number in the past (although there was no acrimony; it was in restarting team 73), I can tell you how FIRST views team numbers (or at least has in the past). Basically, FIRST thinks that the main team contact is the one who “owns” the team number. The main team contact is the one who can do whatever they like with it. When I had to have team 73’s number transfered to me, all they did was request that I speak to the person who had been the main contact in the past. They also provided me with contact information. They weren’t too legalistic about it but they did not want to anger any parties.
Matt
An update as to our situation.
We have talked to FIRST and they have said that we are the owners of the name and number. We just now need to speak to Bob Hammond, and get things down. We have also talked directly to the heads of our old sponsor and they have allowed us to keep the name. We still however have 2 “middle men” the main contacts at our old sponsor who still have our robot locked away, amoung other things that we should have.