LuxRosalía’s fourth album has risen to the altars of contemporary music with its own light. The industry and fans have enthusiastically welcomed this work, considered the most spiritual of the Catalan artist. Critics blessed their first single, Berghain, a piece that many describe as brilliant. But beyond the musical level, Lux is also a finely orchestrated commercial operation. The legal team of an artist of her caliber works in parallel with each release to supervise and protect the business, in which brands, collaborations and audiovisual projects are part of a strategic network.
The first clues about Rosalía’s planned new project came shortly before it became known that the artist had applied for the Lux trademark in her name at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (Euipo) for clothing, performances and music recordings. Rosalía also requested the enigmatic symbol that accompanies the album as a trademark. An intertwined strategy to avoid opportunists. “Submitting the European Union Lux trademark application before the release of the album guarantees provisional protection from the day of its filing,” explains Lucía Palomino, trademark lawyer at Elzaburu.
The name, spelling and types of products chosen for the brands requested by Rosalía are essential to guarantee the business for at least ten years. Lux – light in Latin and short for luxury in English – has often been used as a brand name, for example, for soaps. Can you, therefore, unequivocally distinguish a clothing line linked to the album and coexist with identical names on the market? In theory yes. As Palomino points out, Lux does not describe the objects marketed and, in this sense, Euipo should not reject such a request under the prohibition of lack of “distinctive character”. Santiago Bernal, music lawyer at Sympathy For The Lawyer, clarifies this with an example: the word Apple “would not be distinguishable to refer to a brand of apples, but would be distinguishable to refer to a record label or technological devices”.
However, Lux could be called into question if it challenged pre-existing names for the same products. And the owners of earlier rights – trademarks with more seniority – have a period of three months, from the publication of the application after the preliminary examination, to file an opposition to the registration. Something that would still be possible.
In any case, the brand plan must be replicated in each of the key markets for artists. Rosalía has applied for the trademark at least for Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, countries featuring in her latest Motomami World Tour. There is no evidence that she filed the application in China, where she registered Motomami in its original language. According to Chloe Huang, senior legal advisor from Net Craman Abogados “trademark protection is not automatic between language versions”.
To ensure the identity and positioning of brands in China, says Álvaro de Luis, Asian managing partner of Net Craman, “it is advisable to register both the original version and another version in Chinese” since consumers tend to more easily remember names they understand. The translation does not have to be literal, but strategic. According to the expert, this version “must have a semantic sense, that is, the meaning in Chinese must be in line with the values and attributes of the brand”. A classic example is BMW, whose Chinese name is 宝马 (Băomă), meaning precious horse.
Rosalía has also registered her name as a trademark in several territories, a common practice among celebrities. This “allows us to control its use in products and services,” explains Pablo López Ronda, brand director of Pons IP. And, although Rosalía is a common name, it can be used as a trademark, whose protection can be strengthened with different graphic versions or custom typography. Celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Michael Jordan and Kylie Jenner have followed the same tactic, registering not only their names or nicknames, but also phrases related to their image “to avoid unauthorized uses and monetize their fame through trademark licenses” for which they receive “royalties” comparable to those they get for their work, López points out.
Record labels
What part of this pie does the artist get and what does the record company get? Record contracts, underlines Manuel López, co-CEO of Sympathy For The Lawyer, “can establish that the management of the merchandising is employed by the company, or controlled by the artist himself, in which case it is normal for a “profit fee” to be agreed upon to compensate the label. According to López, artists who sign to a label usually opt for two modalities: the “recording or artist contract”, in which the record company retains ownership of the master and pays royalties of between 10% and 30% to the performer, or the “licensing contract”, which grants the singer a higher percentage of royalties —between 50% and 70%— and ownership of the recording. The choice, he explains, “depends on who takes on the risk of the financial investment, the marketing and promotional work or the legal management”.
The maneuver to profit from the release of an album, concludes Jesús Nogués, Elzaburu’s lawyer, must contemplate “the transfer of some rights of collaborators”, such as the photographer or the designer of the cover of Lux, normally acquired by the record company – in this case Columbia Records -, or of other artists who sing on the album with Rosalía such as Björk.
Very expensive oversights
Mistakes in brand management in collaboration with artists can be costly, as Rihanna’s case with Puma demonstrates. The singer made a mistake by posting a photo on Instagram of herself wearing sneakers two years before Puma officially trademarked them. In 2024, “the Court of the European Union considered that this public disclosure nullified the novelty of the design, which resulted in the invalidity of the registration,” explains Pablo López Ronda, of Pons IP. In this context, he points out, any “seemingly harmless action” can have legal consequences. Even the presence of brands in video clips – such as the one from Berghain, where Rosalía wears an Alexander McQueen dress and sandals – requires “precise contractual regulation”.
