We recently received a query from a client about whether they can utilise a video clip of their CEO giving an interview to an international news agency in their marketing material. The interview was filmed at the offices of the…

Last time I discussed Discovery v Sanlam, the case where the court held that Discovery’s registration for Escalator Funds had not been infringed by Sanlam’s use of the mark Sanlam Escalating Fund, because the presence of the well-known house mark…

Thomas Pink, a fashion label and store, started trading in London in 1984. The core of its business is the sale of shirts which are worn mostly by professional men. Thomas Pink has numerous trade mark registrations around the world…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…