Brokers’ broken hearts: IBA v PIBA

The Irish Brokers Association (IBA) held its annual awards shindig last night in the Mansion House, with an after party in Café en Seine. Surely a jolly occasion.

IBA, however, has recently been involved in a less pleasant scrap with its rival, the Professional Irish Brokers Association (PIBA), over their trade magazines.

If the IBA is the Judean People’s Front, then PIBA is the People’s Front of Judea. Relations between them are, to put it mildly, extremely poor.

In 2011, they sought to merge, the third such attempt at a union. Talks went smoothly until November of that year, when it was abandoned amid rancour over who would run the merged group and how much they would be paid.

PIBA's quarterly trade mag was shortly afterwards rebranded The Broker. A few months after that, IBA's publishing partner, Holyrood Publications, which prints The Irish Broker, applied to also register The Broker trademark.

PIBA objected, saying IBA only wanted to register the term to “stymie” its rival and was acting “in bad faith”. It said IBA’s patent office submissions were “pedantic” and “nit picking”, although I reckon you could level that charge at almost anybody who sells insurance for a living.

In a decision published in recent weeks, the Irish Patents Office has granted Holyrood the trademark.

Broken hearts all round at such an unseemly row.