Victory flight: How Virgin’s small print cost Alaska Airlines $160m in unpaid fees

The global airline’s dispute over unpaid trademark licence fees shows that brands remain highly valuable—even if they are abandoned, finds Muireann Bolger.

Exciting possibilities await when a billion-dollar merger and acquisition (M&A) finally takes off, but legacy clauses related to IP can create some nasty turbulence.

That’s what Alaska Airlines discovered to its cost this month when the High Court of England and Wales ruled that it owed Virgin Airlines $160 million in unpaid fees for the ‘Virgin America’ name even though the branding had been discarded four years earlier.

For Robert Reading, director, government and content strategy at Clarivate, the judgment delivered on February 15, should serve as a cautionary tale ahead of any M&A.