Who owns the Black Sabbath trade mark?

Thank you, veteran IPKat friend Simon Haslam (Abel & Imray), for sending in this link to news that 60 year old Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne (right) is suing the band's guitarist Tony Iommi over royalty payments. Osborne alleges that Iommi has falsely claimed entitlement to the sole rights to the band's name, thus losing him royalties from merchandise sales. An unspecified sum is sought by way of damages and lost profits, as well as a declaration is a half-owner of the trade mark.  Iommi, who registered the Black Sabbath trade mark in the US in 2000, denies liability and says Osbourne legally relinquished rights to the band's name in the 1980s.

Osbourne is reported as saying he believed all four original members of the band should share Black Sabbath's name equally. His lawyer adds that even if he did agree to relinquish his rights, he took a major role in the band's direction and success after rejoining it in 1997.

The IPKat promises to keep an eye on this action, the latest an a long line of disputes between elderly band members who have metamorphosed from rock icons into cuutural antiquities. Merpel says she would hate to have the responsibility for sifting through the memories of the group's various members in the hope of assembling a coherent body of evidence as to what they said and did some time last century.

Black Sabbath Community trade mark here (registered for, among other things, waste backets, planters, vases, candlesticks ...)