The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), the responsible office in the EU for registering Community Trademarks and Community Designs having the "automatic" effect throughtout 28 national EU Member States, just published a unique map which gives a quick overview on Intellectual Property (here: Trademarks, Designs, Patents and Copyrights).

The world is filled with milion of brands but, behind most of them are only a few big cooperations. These companies control the gobal consumers markets for food, beverages, cleaning preperations, personal care products, cosmetics and cigarettes. They control the production of industrial sugar, fat and other ingredients which are essential for all other favourite cosumegoods. The German Newpaper „Die Zeit“ illustrated the big brands on sale and their revenues in Germany. Read more about Brand Octopuses

What is VoteBash? Read more about VoteBash – a new brand and a worldwide social voting site

SyncForce, founded in 1999, is a leading provider of business software that supports branded goods manufacturers. SyncForce also powers “Ranking the Brands”, which just published the Top 500 Franchise Ranking. Only franchise companies with a minimum of 10 units and with at least one being in the US are eligible to take part in the Franchise 500 ranking. The ranking company compared the franchise companies on the factors financial strength and stability-, growth rate-, size of the system,- the number of years of being in business-, the length of time it’s been franchising, startup costs,- percentage of terminations and if financing is provided. Below you can see the “Top 10” of the ranking:   Read more about Top 500 Franchise Ranking