SL lava lamp project bubbling ahead

SOAP LAKE — The city council has instructed city attorney James Whitaker to begin discussing a license agreement with Haggerty Enterprises Inc. to bring to the council's attention.

Haggerty Enterprises holds the licensing rights to the name "lava lamp."

The agreement entails that if the city of Soap Lake wants to put up a sign they received from Target Stores, which looks like a lava lamp, they need to have Haggerty's permission. City council voted 5 to 1 to authorize Whitaker.

Whitaker said that if the city wants to put up the sign, an arrangement should be in place. He added that Haggerty's lawyers have no problem with the sign going up as long as it is in an appropriate place.

"Their interest (Haggerty's) is to protect their intellectual property rights in the name and likeness of the lamp," he said.

The city could reach an agreement to sublicense the lava lamp likeness and name for a 2.5 percent royalty, Whitaker added.

If vendors wanted to have merchandise with the lamp on it, such as lava lamp keychains or T-shirts, they could be licensed through the city and the city would be responsible to collect the 2.5 percent royalties to Haggerty. Any additional percentage would end up in the city's coffers.

"The 2.5 percent would go to Haggerty, over that, it would go to cover the city's costs," he said.

In other city news, the city council made slight changes to a pair of recently adopted ordinances. One of them was to remove the words "tea room" from a commercial building permit ordinance determining what kind of buildings were permitted in a C-1 building zone.

Up to now, the ordinance permitted restaurants, cafes and the like to be built in a C-1 zone, a list that also included the words "tea room."

However, a recent application for a construction of a house the applicant dubbed as a "tea house" caught the city's attention. The owner was denied a commercial permit for the "tea house" because the construction was a residential structure in a commercial zone.

Last, the city council amended another ordinance changing a guideline for the height of front yard and backyard fences. As they stand now, front yard fences can be up to 4 feet high and back yard fences can be up to 6 feet high.