What's in a Name?
It seemed, at first, that leaving Motown would be easier than Joseph thought it would be. Berry Gordy had done nothing to prevent their departure; he was preoccupied with Motown's film business, anyway, and didn't seem too dismayed by the fact that The Jackson 5 was leaving the company. As long as he had Jermaine in his corner, and had won that particular battle, Berry seemed satisfied. Because he did not want to deal with Joseph anyway, Ewart Abner was the one handling most matters concerning The Jackson 5, during their final days at Motown.
But few acts have ever left Motown without at least a little melodrama. Unbeknownst to Joseph, Berry Gordy had one more surprise in store for him.
In the last week in June 1975, Berry Gordy's vice-chairman of Motown telephoned Joseph Jackson with a bombshell: Motown owned the name The Jackson 5. The group could leave Motown, Joseph was told, but they would have to leave the name. ‘Jackson 5’ would stay behind with the company.
‘What are you talking about?’ Joseph demanded, according to his memory. ‘We came to Motown as The Jackson 5. That's my family name.’
‘I don't know if you came here as The Jackson 5, or not,’ Michael Roshkind told him, ‘but you're sure not leaving as The Jackson 5, I can tell you that much.’
‘What the hell do you mean?’ Joseph asked.
‘The fact is that there are probably forty thousand people named Jackson running around this world,’ Roshkind said. ‘We made five of them stars. We can find five more if we have to, and we can make them stars, too,’ Roshkind said.
‘Why, you
son of a bitch,
’ Joseph exclaimed. He slammed the phone down.
As it happened, clause sixteen of the Motown recording contract, which Joseph had never read but had signed in 1968, stated, ‘It is agreed that we [Motown] own all rights, title and interest to the name “The Jackson 5”.’
Furthermore, to insure the company's ownership of the name, on 30 March 1972, after The Jackson 5's first string of hit records, Motown applied to the United States Patent Office to register the logo ‘Jackson 5’. The name ‘Jackson Five’ and ‘Jackson 5’ were also exclusively owned by the Motown Record Corporation.
Of course, Joseph could have registered the names ‘Jackson Five’, ‘Jackson 5’, and any other name he wanted to hold on to – had he only thought to do it. It simply had not crossed his mind. However, it had been common practice for Motown to register the name of its acts, whenever possible. The company had done so with The Supremes, the Temptations… and with many of its acts over the years.
With this latest salvo, the group's departure from Motown had become bigger than the record business, it was now a battle between two families: the Jacksons and the Gordys. It seemed to some observers that anything Berry could do to demonstrate his power to an ever-scrutinizing record industry and press, he would do, even if that meant preventing the boys from using their name. ‘That was hardball, of course,’ Michael told me, later.
Michael was actually intrigued by Berry's tactic regarding the group's name. ‘I never even
thought
of that,’ he said. It was as if he was as much a student of Berry's as he was an adversary. While the other brothers watched, waited and fumed, Michael learned. ‘I want to know how he did it,’ Michael said of Berry's having registered the name. ‘I'll have to remember all of this,’ he added, as if stockpiling information for future use.
There was another family meeting. What do we do now?
‘If Berry owns the name, he owns the name,’ Michael said, according to his memory. ‘We don't have to be The Jackson 5, do we? I mean, can't we just be The Jackson Family? Or The Jacksons?’
‘We might not have a choice,’ Joseph said. ‘It makes me sick to lose that name. All the work we put into it.’
‘And you know damn well that they ain't gonna use it,’ grumbled Tito. ‘It'll just be wasted.’
Tito was correct. Once Motown claimed the name, there wasn't much they could do with it, other than to market old products by the group.