Regent’s clashes with US evangelists over title

As vice chancellor of Regent's University London (RUL), I would like to make one correction to the article above, one addition and one observation. Dennis Farrington is confused on the matter of process for acquiring university title. BIS has been careful to ensure that both public and private institutions go through equivalent scrutiny. In fact, non state funded institutions have to go through rather more, as they have not previously been under the direct oversight of HEFCE. The process for agreeing name specifies exactly the same requirements. BIS reviews the consultation outcomes and makes a recommendation to the Privy Council in the case of state funded institutions and provides a letter on non-objection to Companies House. The BIS process stipulates a minimum consultation period of four weeks. RUL allowed a period of eight weeks to the more than 300 institutions consulted worldwide, many of which had the word Regent in their title. The seven objections came from elements of London University and UUK objecting to the word London, which is of course, a qualifier used by many - Metropolitan, South Bank, East and West - and cannot be copyrighted. Finally, as the judge in the Patent County Court observed, there are actually many universities all over the world that even have the same name and they have always managed to co-exist and it strange to see one charity taking action against another in these circumstances. We would certainly not wish to be confused with a small, narrowly focused US institution that appears to be more focused on litigation - there have had to withdraw from other similar cases - than on the real objectives of an educational charity which is to generate knowledge, stimulate thought and provide a valuable and inclusive learning experience. Then, of course, we do not believe that there is any prospect of genuine or damaging confusion. We expect to resolve this positively in the near future. Aldwyn Cooper

Sorry Aldwyn, I'm not confused at all. My comment was only that there is no equivalent in the 'companies route' to the provision dating from 1988 requiring the Privy Council to avoid names which are confusing. This is just one of a number of areas in which we need to update our higher education law. I do not take any position on the case itself. Dennis Farrington