Click here for our gallery of famous moustachesKEY POINTS:
Movember may provide plenty of fun alongside awareness of prostate cancer as it kicks off today, but one group has discovered the goodwill goes only so far.
Ashburton's First Friday Boys Club had planned its own Movember event, in which men vie for the best moustaches to raise money, to support Christchurch's Ronald McDonald House for seriously ill children and their families.
Enthusiasm for the local event was high, but when Movember's founders in Australia got wind of their brand being used for a charity other than prostate cancer, they moved to stop it.
The Ashburton group received letters advising them Movember was a registered trademark and "implying" legal action would follow if they did not comply, said group member and radio host Phill Hooper.
Hooper had helped to come up with the fundraising idea and said he could understand where the Australians were coming from.
But it was still very disappointing to have to cancel the event.
"We thought that we could do a nice little local thing. I guess the whole concept of growing a mo in November they weren't happy about. So even if we had changed the name, we still would have been in trouble probably."
The Ashburton Movember concept involved Hooper's radio station, Classic Hits, and the Speights Ale House local restaurant. This also created problems as rival brands The Rock radio station and Tui beer are both sponsors of the mainstream Movember event.
Luke Slattery, director of the Movember Foundation in Australia, told the Herald: "Movember was set up to help build higher levels of awareness around men's health - an area that's been really under-represented in the past.
"We have to stay focused on raising money and awareness for men's health so every guy in the country that grows a mo and gets sponsored during the month of November knows the money he raises is going to help support that cause."
Intellectual property expert Clive Elliott said Movember bosses appeared to be justified in writing to the Ashburton group, so that the recognition they had built up was not diluted.
Although a concept of simply growing a moustache would be very difficult to "monopolise" in intellectual property, the combination of that, a defined month and a defined charity were "more protectable".
Plans are under way to run a different fundraising event in Ashburton in the new year, with a variation on the facial hair theme.
