The Burning Man trademark, a 20 year old symbol of radical self expression and self reliance, is embroiled in a legal battle over who owns the brand and whether or not it should be commercialized.  The Burning Man Festival, an annual art festival and temporary community in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, has developed from a series of small bonfire parties on a San Francisco beach into a phenomenon that is continuing to grow and becoming more recognizable, especially due to the festival ending ritual of burning a 40-foot effigy of the human figure: the Burning Man.  Attendees of the festival, or Burners, are mostly affluent, white, college-educated, middle class males between the ages of 21 - 40 and have money to burn on the commercialization of the brand.

The founders of the Burning Man Festival originally agreed to an altruistic mission of keeping the Burning Man brand protected from licensing or being used in any manner to procure financial benefits but, as the festival grew, the brand became more valuable and exploited, taking advantage of Burners' disposal incomes and willingness to buy Burning Man licensed goods.  However, not all of the founders participated in the economic benefits.  One of the founders is suing his two former partners over the ownership of the Burning Man name and logo, ultimately hoping to have the trademarks either become part of the public domain or forcing shared ownership among the three founders.  As the case moves forward in arbitration, there are many possible outcomes, including:  all three founders retaining equal ownership; one party gaining sole ownership; or the trademarks defaulting to the public domain.  An alternative solution that may be more in line with the ideals of the festival would be converting the trademarks into collective marks owned by an organization whose members could use them to identify themselves with a level of quality or accuracy, geographical origin, or other characteristics set by the organization.

The Burning Man brand has simply outgrown the original intentions of the founders and now must be dealt with accordingly.  Efforts to put the brand in the public domain seem to be an effort to return the festival to its roots and remind all involved of the true purpose of the gathering. Putting the trademarks in the public domain will prevent anyone from singularly capitalizing from the festival, its name, logo, and designs because the public domain creates an implicit license for anyone to use the content without restriction.  However noble this intention, the brand is too valuable to be simply placed in the public domain and exploited by any number of people. This concept has created a storm of controversy between supporters of the original mission and supporters of the festival organizers, who collectively oppose the move to public domain.  The festival organizers believe putting the trademarks into the public domain will allow anyone to use and exploit the Burning Man brand, effectively profiting from a brand that everyone who participated in the event collaboratively helped to create. 

If the founders truly believe that the benevolent mission should be upheld, perhaps turning the trademarks into a collective mark for use by a collective group or an organization may be the best, albeit unorthodox, manner to protect the trademarks and stay true to the original ideals of the festival.  A collective mark is a trademark or service mark used, or intended to be used, in commerce, by the members of a cooperative, an association, or other collective group or organization, including a mark which indicates membership in a union, an association, or other organization. The owner of the trademarks would simply assign the rights to the trademark to a newly founded Burning Man Festival Organization or Burning Man collective group, which would then institute stringent requirements for members to use the trademarks. By doing this, the festival can control usage of the Burning Man brand through group or organization registration thereby allowing all those involved to freely use the collective mark while preventing exploitation from outsiders.