We had an interesting South African trade mark decision which dealt the issue of honest concurrent use. In the case of Woolworths v KR Agencies, Woolworths opposed an application filed by a company called KR to register a trade mark … Read More

The US trademark authorities recently issued a ruling that made the headlines – the trademark registrations for Redskins belonging to the Washington Redskins football team must be cancelled. Why? Because they contain ‘matter that is likely to disparage’. It’s a … Read More

Late last year the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) handed down an important trademark judgment. This was a trademark opposition and the issue was whether a local accounts software company was entitled to the registration of the mark Orangeworks for … Read More

The Kit Kat decision has attracted considerable interest, not least because the Kit Kat product shape trademarks have been controversial. The issue in the SA litigation was this: had the company Iffco infringed Nestle’s registrations for the shape of the … Read More

The Supreme Court of Appeal recently handed down an important trademark judgment. It dealt with the issue of the similarity of goods, which is important because the law says that a mark will be too close to an earlier registration … Read More

In issue 78 we looked at how Rihanna successfully sued Topshop for passing off in the UK, after the clothing chain made unauthorised use of her photo in an ad – the court accepted that people seeing the ad would … Read More

We’ve discussed the case of BMW v Grandmark in the past. This is the case where BMW tried to stop Grandmark selling generic or so-called ‘replacement’ parts for BMWs on the basis of Aesthetic Design registrations for a bonnet, a … Read More

In the last Distinctive IP I said that the Rihanna celebrity endorsement case highlights the fact that a celebrity whose name or image is used without authority to promote a product has various legal options. There’s passing off, if there’s … Read More

Rihanna has successfully sued Topshop (a retail chain) for passing off in the UK High Court. The facts were very simple – Topshop used a photo of Rihanna on t-shirts, but it didn’t bother to get the artist’s consent. The … Read More

We had a rare trademark decision from the Eastern Cape High Court recently. It was a full bench (appeal) decision and it dealt with the issue of whether Cerebos had passed off its braai salt as that of the company … Read More