IN FOCUS: Miss Supranational should resolve its copyright issues

There is no doubt that the Miss Supranational pageant is a serious contender of being included as one of the major pageants in the world. With its dazzling finals night, great choreography and recent spike in popularity, Miss Supranational has the capability of transforming the Missosology’s Big4 into Big5. But there are contentious issues why the Big5 is yet to materialize. To start with, Miss Supranational is still very young. The pageant started only in 2009 and including it as one of the major pageants will be rather haphazard in part of Missosology. It must be taken into note that when the Big4 was officially born, all the pageants included were already 10 years old. Miss Supranational is also under scrutiny as it lacks an official and active advocacy. A major pageant should have a central theme to its existence and it is crucial that its winners are actively pursuing the required goals.

Aside from being too young and the absence of an official advocacy, the major hindrance for Miss Supranational from being called as a major pageant is the copyright issue hounding it. As of this date, there are two Miss Supranational pageants one to be held in Poland and the other to be held in India. Missosology has already officially announced that it is supporting the Polish version of the pageant as it is where its former winners will be attending. Both pageants are using the same logo and exists online – one being misssupranational.com and the other misssupranational.tv. The confusion that this situation creates is tampering the prestige of the pageant. Worse, it puts into question about copyrights – who truly owns the brand and logo of Miss Supranational.

Countries like the Philippines and Venezuela are already sending candidates to each of the pageant.  This kind of confusion should be resolved and the true owner of the Miss Supranational brand should assert his or her rights. Unless a solution will be in sight soon, Miss Supranational could not be considered as a major pageant. The copyright issue along with other points raised should be addressed by the pageant before any assessment by Missosology could take place.