The Desmond Tutu Peace Trust (DTPT) has bestowed a great honor on Stellenbosch University by engaging the services of the Chair of Intellectual Property (CIP) at the Faculty of Law. The Chair has accepted the position of chief Intellectual Property Law advisor to the Trust and will in future be available to assist in all aspects of the Trust’s […]
Owen’s article “Sport as a brand and its legal protection in South Africa” has been published by the quarterly Global Sports Law and Taxation Reports (March 2012, Issue 1, Pages 41 – 46). An abridged version of this article has been published by CIP earlier, and the full text is now available in the PUBLICATIONS section.
On the Internet there is only one thing that really matters – prominence. It is the nexus of all factors that drive the ever-expanding cyberspace. In this world, the attention span of every visitor is measured in seconds, and the amount of traffic to a specific website measured with scientific precision. It is, therefore, not […]
A journalist who cannot define plagiarism is nearly as useful as a bucket without a bottom. Similarly, while the nation is expected to rise in defence of the independence of the press (and rightly so), one might be excused for thinking that all members of the media are capable of independent thought. Unfortunately, judging by […]
Major sports are big business and vast sums of money are involved in staging sport events. This global trend was brought into sharp focus in South Africa during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which provided an excellent example of the role that branding plays in major sports, both generally and more especially in South Africa., explains […]
In the past sport was a recreational pastime and it was played for pleasure and, on an international level, for the honour of one’s country. Sportsmen and women took part in sport on a voluntary basis. Times, however, have changed and most major sports are now played at top level on a professional basis. Major sporting stars receive very substantial incomes for plying their trade. Major sports have now become big business and vast sums of money are involved in staging major tournaments.
In recent news, the TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) has called on government to revise the Patents Act to reduce the patent protection available to pharmaceutical inventions, which the organisation believes is responsible for the high cost of medicines and a delay in the availability of generic medicines. The organisation refers to the Doha Declaration, which has been […]
So, the Department of Trade and Industry (“DTI”) has finally gone ahead and done it. It has caused the Government to pass the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill (the so-called “Traditional Knowledge Bill”) despite vociferous objections from all quarters. It has rushed headlong into terrain where no angel would venture through acute trepidation. It has […]
The Vine Oracle recently chatted to a professional photographer and had occasion to reflect on the treatment meted out to this group by our Copyright law. Apparently freelance photography in South Africa is not the lucrative business it appears to be– quite the contrary. Copyright is supposed to allow creators of original works to make money […]
Surreptitious negotiations, covert drafts, leaked documents and swift announcements at the eleventh-hour – such is the stranger-than-fiction story of the ‘Piracy Treaty’ signed by several world powers in the past week. Amid controversy about the autocratic role of the USA in the drafting process, and the not-so-voluntary gist of the treaty, most of the Allied […]
