HMV's Brand, Including Dog Mascot Nipper, May Live On

The financial collapse earlier this month of retailer HMV Group could mean the shuttering of 230 shops and the elimination of thousands of jobs across the U.K. The demise of Britain’s biggest seller of music and movies also has left loyal little Nipper the dog, its trademark, searching for a home. The century-old image of cock-eared Nipper listening to a gramophone dubbed His Master’s Voice—the source of HMV’s name—could be sold along with other trademarks to an investment company such as Hilco Trading or another of the scores of businesses that have looked at the company’s assets so far.

There’s a thriving trade in downtrodden but well-known brands such as HMV and Polaroid. Liquidation specialists are attracted by the value of an established name and its related trademarks. They can breathe new life into so-called phoenix brands by repositioning a brick-and-mortar retailer as an online merchant or licensing the name to others for new products, according to Gary Assim, an intellectual property lawyer at U.K. law firm Shoosmiths. “Roughly speaking, 70 percent of the value of a company is goodwill, or the value in the brand. It has nothing to do with its physical assets,” Assim explains. “A business with a high goodwill value, like HMV, is more likely to be a phoenix brand.”