Christian company Authentic Media LL, under fire for trademarking the phrase ‘Worship Leader” and then sending cease and desist letters to those who use it, including other Christian worship groups, have responded to criticism over their enforcement of it, claiming they are simply protecting their business interests.
Authentic Media’s entities were founded by Dr. Chuck & Stephanie Fromm nearly 40 years ago. Fromm was appointed CEO of Maranatha! Music in the early 1970s at the invitation of his uncle Chuck Smith, the well-known pastor of Calvary Chapel. He spent decades at Maranatha! Music, training worship leaders, and starting all sorts of worship-themed initiatives, including Worship Leader Magazine in 1991, which morphed into the website worshipleader.com. Claiming to coin the phrase ‘Worship Leader, it was first trademarked in 1993, passing through many groups Fromm was involved with, before he ultimately had complete control of it.
Though Fromm passed away in 2020, his wife and estate formed Authentic Media LLC in 2021 to merge all the Fromm’s companies and projects to “create an entity that would house Worship Leader Magazine, Song Discovery, Pray Musically, Worshiper Magazine, Worship Podcast, and Worship Connect brands and bring them under one umbrella.”
Worship Leader’s mission and passion is to exalt God (Father, Son, & Holy Spirit) and join those called to lead in sung prayer and the service of worship with the express purpose of building the House of Prayer for all nations (Isa 56:7, Mk 11:17) and generations.
Together with pastors, musicians, scholars, educators, centers of learning, artists, technologists, sound engineers, arrangers, composers, poets, painters, theologians, producers and publishers, we covenant to recover, discover, and share treasures of worship, both old and new and stir the biblical imagination of this and following generations.”
Receiving previous criticism for their litigious actions surrounding the phrase “Worship Leader,” the group released an article in 2022 defending their efforts and offering this backstory and justification for why they go after those using it. Stephanie Fromm, Chuck’s widow, explains:
“The term “Worship Leader” was created as a response from my husband to a need in the church community. It filled the gap between music ministers and the rest of the team. What was the role of this “music” person in the church? It was to lead in worship or to be the worship leader. There are many parts to leading worship. It’s not just singing songs. It includes giving of tithes, spoken prayer, and the teaching of the Word, and we walk in worship every day”
….Chuck was at the beginning of what we now know as modern praise and worship. So, our name is at the heart of the ministry and when Chuck coined the phrase it was to help give significance to these individuals that were being overlooked at churches. We filled the need to explain their calling and label them and be their voice and advocate for them, which we’ve done now for decades.”
She continues:
“Before that time (Editors Note. 1991, when Fromm founded Worship Leader Magazine) , the term “worship leader” was not one commonly used in church ministry. Chuck wanted to cover two main ministry categories: worship and leadership, which is where the magazine, and subsequently an entire role in the church, got its name….we have a long history that goes back to the Jesus Revolution and we’re just fortunate enough that our founder and his team essentially created this term “worship leader” and then trademarked it and built our business off of it.
They note that they have spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” purchasing the term “Worship Leader” from Maranatha! Music,” defending in court when others seek to use it, and all manner of other associations with it.
“Given that rich history, why wouldn’t we defend our name? Would you be okay with someone impersonating you? Why would we allow someone else to take all that history, the same logo, the same title, and the same calling, and use it for something that doesn’t align with who we are at Worship Leader?
and:
In fact, God has so much creativity that you can lean in on your own gifting and come up with your own name. Additionally, we welcome anyone who wants to work with us in ministry, but not to abuse or take what is not theirs….Sometimes history should be honored and not thrown away because the latest cultural trend disagrees with that history.”
“Worship Leader has a specific mission we feel the Lord has given to us and if another company came along and used our name to do anything close to our mission, but was in fact a completely different business, we would consider that a challenge to the legitimacy of our brand. We feel strongly that Worship Leaders’ mission of empowering the church to build a lifestyle of worship is worth defending, therefore we will continue to defend our trademarks to ensure that there is no brand confusion and that the words “Worship Leader” are synonymous with our mission.”
As far as why they are taking down accounts on social media networks, they are unapologetic. They offer they merely report accounts in they think one has occurred, and the social media giants determine whether or not there is a legitimate violation, not them.
“Regarding social networks, we have no control over their actions as they have their own terms of service that users must abide by, but due to the legal importance of a trademark, they all have trademark infringement claims departments where businesses can submit documentation proving ownership of a trademark and report accounts that violate a trademark.
We have submitted documentation to social networks before when we’ve found businesses to be unresponsive to our request to stop using our property in the form of our trademark. But, the important point here is that we aren’t determining whether or not there is a trademark violation. We are reporting that we feel there is one. Social networks, like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, etc., determine for themselves based on the evidence we provide whether or not a user account or a piece of content violates a trademark”
