BBC loses Great British Bake Off

If that's the case, then surely when ITV had the Premiership highlights, the BBC could've sued them for nicking elements of Match of the day. It's ridiculous, and just doesn't and shouldn't happen.

So it seems like this...
...was a publicity stunt and the "announcement" was Holly and Phil ruling themselves out.

Just a badly thought out joke:

Can they get in trouble for that? It was an announcement but certainly not an official one!

Only in the court of public opinion, with viewers feeling they were misled. Nothing illegal, and what they tweeted was kind of factually accurate...

Quite clever really.

TV clickbait. They're a wacky pair that Phil & Holly, I'm sure they spent a good further 10 minutes laughing at their hilarious tedium.

For calling it a Bake Off, I assume. They do realise that they don't have a trademark on that? It would be like Marvel trying to sue DC for that character called Enchantress in Suicide Squad (Marvel's Enchantress is a character from the Thor comics) - the name is too common to make a claim on.

Sadly Digital Spy consider Holly and Phil's announcement main story material. The pair of them are slowly becoming, in my eyes, the two people you keep seeing at your friends' parties and you can't understand why everybody else seems to like them.

Yep, though 'Bake Off' is trademarked, but not by Love Productions, and only includes kitchen machines: https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00002640368
I believe that the term is however trademarked inn the US by Kraft or similar, hence why it has to be called 'The Great British Baking Show' there

They do have trademarks for 'The Great British Bake Off' and several for 'Junior Bake Off' which include all sorts of categories to cover all possible branded merchandise

I'm a bit turned off by all the Channel 4 bashing this move seems to have brought. The narrative is that Channel 4 had this evil plan all along to snatch the show from under the BBC's nose. As far as I can tell what actually happened is that Love Productions wanted more money, the BBC said no, so they had to find another broadcaster. Whether this is right or wrong of them is up to you, but your ire should really be going to the production company and not either of the broadcasters (some have said the BBC should have just paid outright for it).

Channel 4 seems the perfect fit, being the closest to a public service broadcaster as the BBC is, and therefore will hopefully not make it as commercial as some worried it might have been had it gone to ITV. Plus, the channel itself is equivalent to BBC Two which is what the show originally started on.

It does seem daft that Channel 4 agreed to the deal without ensuring that the actual talent were coming along with the show itself, but to call for the entire corporation to be privatised on the basis of one deal is a bit much. I mean, it's not as if the BBC hasn't bought in expensive formats before *cough*The Voice*cough*.

There are some saying that Channel 4 shouldn't have bought it because it should only show "alternative" programming, forgetting the fact that this is the channel that has shown The Simpsons at 6pm every weekday for the past twelve years (and I can't imagine anyone would watch the channel if it only had what were deemed worthy, edgy programmes)

Trademarks are irrelevant really - it would be more a case of 'passing off' if the BBC did a contest that used the word Bake in it, or appeared similar in content to Bake Off.