Dear Editor,
Miss Ethiopia Event PLC owner of Miss Ethiopia brand is a mission-driven organization with a vision to build a global “Beauty for a Purpose” brand by leveraging the beauty of Ethiopian women, the country’s history, diversity and cultures. It has a mission to identify and empower the next generation of young Ethiopian women leaders with self-confidence and enable them to influence positive change through championing of causes they care about.
With Ethiopia’s 80+ ethnic background and some of the most diverse genetic pool in the world, Miss Ethiopia has the potential to become a leading global “Miss” brand that can surface many potential “Miss Universes”, “Miss Worlds”, and reveal the true diversity of Ethiopian beauty and cultures to the world.
For the past ten years, Miss Ethiopia Event PLC has been organizing beauty pageants in collaboration with broadcasting partners, the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the Ministry of Women and Children. Miss Ethiopia Events PLC is the sole owner of the “Miss Ethiopia” trade-name and has various pending trademarks associated to Miss Ethiopia beauty pageant.
Since February 2017, Miss Ethiopia Events PLC has established a new management and is working relentlessly to advance its mission to create a global brand based on a founding value of equality and inclusiveness of all Ethiopia’s ethnic nationalities and of beauty for a purpose. It has crafted a comprehensive strategy for:
- Unity in Diversity: promoting the cultures of all ethnic nationalities through the organization of regional beauty pageant and create a sense of national pride based on the diversity of cultures. This process is crafted to leverage the history and culture of all Ethiopian regions and creating a touristic value for the country through methodical video shooting and storytelling.
- Beauty for a Purpose: Empowering selected pageants to be the advocate for humanitarian causes they care about and sensitizing them to expose bad cultures that disproportionality affect women, while setting a clear path for their personal careers. This section will promote and support selected foundations that the pageants will visit as part of the Miss Ethiopia event broadcasting.
- Building Ethiopia’s Brand Globally: Forging strategic partnerships to give the proper training for Miss Ethiopia pageants to enable them to represent their country as a whole in global beauty pageant contests like Miss Universe and Miss World to name a few.
The recent Miss Ethiopia asset infringement case
The registered name of our organization, Miss Ethiopia Events PLC, our registered “Miss Ethiopia” trade-name along with its associated pending trademarks entitles us to restrict the use of “Miss Ethiopia” brand or the use of any confusingly similar brands in association with similar services that Miss Ethiopia Events PLC provides.
The unauthorized use of our registered assets by Hiwot Bekele in the organization of her event that she named Miss Ethiopia Grand Slam beauty contest, which was held at Sheraton Addis on Friday September 29, 2017 is an infringement to our rights. The misrepresentation of the Miss Ethiopia brand by Hiwot has caused substantial harm to our brand integrity and has jeopardized our ongoing discussions with our strategic partners.
Although our initial approach was to solve the issue amicably with Hiwot, these assets being core to the mission and goodwill of our organization, circumstances have forced us to take legal actions that prevented Hiwot from using our assets at the day of her event.
The Reporter’s article
The recent article published by The Reporter on September 30, 2017 Vol. XXII No. 1099 entitled “Pageant held, stripped of ‘Miss Ethiopia’ tag”, while factual, has chosen to tell the story of a legal action between Murad Mohammed, who is the founder and shareholder of Miss Ethiopia Event PLC, and Hiwot Bekele, to prevent her from using the Miss Ethiopia brand. We believe that this article has misrepresented Miss Ethiopia Event PLC, whose core value is women empowerment, by orienting the story as a legal battle between Murad and Hiwot and not an organization who has legally fought to protect its assets.
We, therefore, wish to clarify that the legal action was taken by two appointed lawyers of Miss Ethiopia Event PLC to prevent the unauthorized use of its intellectual property.
We also wish to assert our strong belief that this article would have had more impact, had it oriented the story on the Ethiopian intellectual property landscape that favors protection of legitimate organizations with a clearly defined strategy to create sustainable value for the country and the world at large.
Miss Ethiopia Events PLC