Legal fight to protect Great North Run's identity

Jan 10 2009 by Dan Warburton, The Journal

ITS the worlds biggest half-marathon and organisers of the Great North Run are going to great lengths to make sure theirs remains the great race.

Lawyers acting for Nova International have taken exception to the title of the 10K Great East Anglia Run which last year attracted fewer than 2,000 runners.

The legal team sent a letter to West Norfolk Council in November challenging their use of the word great for their annual charity race.

And now councillors in Norfolk have agreed to change the name of the Kings Lynn race to the Grand East Anglia Run.

Elizabeth Nockolds, West Norfolk council cabinet member for sports, arts and open spaces, said: I feel the word great should be available to be used by anybody.

I was really shocked when the letter came and I cannot believe there is a legal challenge over one word. We have run the race for three years without any legal issues.

I do not think the name change will have any impact. We know people want to go out and take part whatever the race is called.

The worlds most popular half-marathon was founded in 1981 by Olympic bronze medallist Brendan Foster. Last year, it attracted 52,000 runners.

Nova has an expanding number of races prefixed with the word great both nationally and internationally as far afield as Australia.

David Hart, Novas head of communications, yesterday said the organisation had seen an increase in the number of other road-races which have tried to use the word great.

He said: What we needed to do was protect the Great Run brand which we have spent the last 20 years building up.

There have been a number of instances with the use of the word great in logos and advertising in recent months.

Its not a big problem, but there have been a couple of instances where weve had to hold discussions and put our case forward. We have no problems with competition in the market, in fact we encourage people providing activities.

Fortunately the situation is usually resolved amicably.

A Kings Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council spokesman said: We had a letter from lawyers representing the Great North Run.

Weve made the decision to change the word Great to Grand. This is a charity event. We dont think its right for us to spend public money in legal arguments over something like this.