BENDIGO and SYDNEY, Australia – When Bendigo Bank of Australia came up with a program marketing a scheme where local communities could invest AUS$400,000 (US$295,000) to have the privilege of designated essential banking services and called the program community banking, Australian credit unions had no problems with the program. In fact, credit unions use a logo that says "credit unions – a different kind of banking." However, when Bendigo wanted to trademark the two words "community banking", credit unions called foul. Bendigo spokesperson Ian Davies said, "I guess we had to establish that 'community bank' was unique, that there was nothing else like 'community bank' in the marketplace. In our view, it does recognise the intellectual property. It's not saying that Bendigo Bank has a monopoly on the word 'community' at all – it's saying that we have a specific banking model, which engages the local community at a local level in running the bank branch and it recognizes that that model is unique to Bendigo Bank and therefore it's worthy of registration." In the debate to stop Bendigo's exclusive use of "community banking", credit unions were represented by the Credit Union Industry Association, which is the advocacy arm of the Credit Union Services Corporation of Australia, Ltd. "The concept of banking organizations being owned by the local community for the benefit of the local community has been in Australia for almost 60 years," CUIA General Manager Adrian Lovney said. "It's called a credit union, a mutual where our customers are also our owners." Credit unions have 3.6 million members and some AUS$34 (US$25) billion in assets. Bendigo is older than credit unions by almost a century. It was founded in the 1850s as a building society to offer financial services to miners including financing their cottages. Bendigo converted from a building society to a bank in 1955. It now has more than 310 branches with subsidiaries offering the gambit of financial products. On Feb. 3, 2006 Bendigo agreed to withdraw its request for the trademark. "This withdrawal is a recognition by Bendigo Bank that credit unions have been offering member focused and locally owned community banking for nearly 60 years. For credit unions, community banking is not a marketing opportunity or slogan, it defines who we are – member focussed, community-owned financial services organizations," Lovney said. -

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