Garber happy for fans to own Cascadia Cup trademark

After what feels like more than just three months, MLS First Kick gets underway this weekend and Commissioner Don Garber is spending the opening of the 2013 season in Vancouver, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Jose.

As part of his whistle-stop tour of the west coast, Garber held a round table with Vancouver media on Friday afternoon at BC Place, and since he was in Cascadia it was only fitting to quiz the commissioner on the whole Cascadia Cup trademark debacle, and that's just what Bob Mackin, Marc Weber and myself did.

For the first time publically, Garber indicated that the trademark issue would be settled in a way which would not only be acceptable to all parties, as he already stated in his "March To Soccer" address on Wednesday, but with a resolution that would see the fans as the holders of the trademark of the trophy.

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To get the full feel of the conversation, and with the importance of the comments made, we need to bring you the exchanges in full:

Bob: Why did MLS take the approach it did regarding the supporters here in the west coast, in Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, with the trademark issue? Why not approach them first and what is the latest on that?

Don: We should have. I don't know if you guys saw, we did a unique You Tube preseason address two days ago, where rather than the teleconference that we had for years we did it on Google plus. It's called a Google hang out. One of the first questions was from a fan in Seattle.

The first thing I said was we didn't get it right. No business, no company, is perfect. We're going to try to make good decisions. Not all of them will be executed the way they should be and in that case we should have reached out to the supporters groups in this region to talk about our desire to do something that we still believe is important, which is to protect the Cascadia Cup as a tournament and ensure that it's being managed in the best interests of the fans but also our clubs and the League.

We've had two lengthy conference calls with a group that came together called the Cascadia Cup Council. We were not able to reach resolution yet. I'm very confident that we will reach an agreement that will be good for the Cascadia Cup Council and all the fans up here, but also good for the League, and I'm just encouraged that we'll be able to reach an agreement that will make sense.

We should have gone about it in a different way.

Marc: Does that agreement, Don, have to include a sponsor in your eyes?

Don: Look, you could imagine how much time we spent thinking about this both when it broke and over the last four to five weeks. This was not about sponsorship. It was not about licensing. It was about ensuring that if it was going to be commercialised, it was commercialised properly.

If it turns out that that group decides they never want to commercialise it, we'll be fine with that.

The League was not looking to register it so that we could commercialise it. We just wanted to make sure that it wasn't used by others and when you don't have a trademark registered it basically is free for anybody to do what they wanted to do with it, and that's something we believe wasn't in the best interest of our fans and certainly wasn't in the best interest of our League and the clubs that were involved.

And I think right now they will manage it, the Cup Council will manage it in a way that will be in their best interest and I think we'll work with them to make ensure that the League or the clubs are able to have a voice in what's done so that it makes sense for us as well.

Michael: So would the League be happy with a resolution where the fans own the trademark?

Don: Yes. Yes. We would be. We would be.

This is so unique. You have a situation where that Cup existed before MLS existed, but it does exist today in a platform that involves our teams, so it is a unique situation.

Just the other day the Independent Supporters Council came up with a plan for how they wanted to manage the Supporters' Shield, and their comments I think were very supportive of working with the League in a way that would make sense for the League and the Independent Supporters Council.

So this is new ground. This is not something that other leagues in North America are dealing with, it's certainly not something that leagues in Europe are dealing with. So as a new league, with emerging issues, you got to try to deal with those issues as they come up.

Probably need to take a step back at times and think about this new dynamic as opposed to what we did in this case, which was just to go out to see how we could properly protect it without thinking about the interest the supporters, the Cascadia Cup Council, had for the Cup on their own.

I'm very confident that we'll reach an agreement that will make sense for the fans, the clubs and the League.

More encouraging signs that the battle may soon be won and good will prevail.

You do get the feeling from listening to Garber that he just wants this issue to now go away and for media to stop talking about and concentrate on matters such as First Kick.

Until everything is signed, sealed and delivered, that can't happen and myself, and many others, will remain cautious with an air of scepticism.

He knows what he needs to do, so let's hope for a speedy resolution. The signs are at least a lot more promising that they appeared in January.

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Garber happy for fans to own Cascadia Cup trademark

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