Supreme Court of Appeal Losing Its Shape

INTRODUCTION The Supreme Court of Appeal has been blessed for the past few decades by having in its ranks judges who have experience and expertise in the field of Intellectual Property Law. One thinks of Judges like Chris Plewman and Louis Harms who had a wealth of experience in handling IP cases while practising as […]

Keyword Advertising: The Next Instalment in the Interflora v M&S Saga

A few days after the first South African case to consider the issue of Internet keyword advertising (Cochrane Steel Products (Pty) Ltd v M-Systems Group (Pty) Ltd & Another Case 39605/13, 29 October 2014), we had the next instalment – from the English Court of Appeal – in the dispute between Interflora and Marks & […]

Open Letter – Plain Packaging Legislation and the Constitution

NOTE: The following open letter has been delivered by email to the office of the Minister of Health of the Republic of South Africa on 31 July 2014. The contents of this letter is published here in furtherance of the debate on plain packaging legislation and the potential impact on the Constitutional rights of the […]

A Spoon Full of Sugar for Plain Packaging

History has taught us that the South African Government, and the Legislature in particular, will not hesitate to make bad law. The volume of carelessly drafted, ill conceived, unconstitutional and overtly political laws that the public has been force-fed in recent years is so great that recourse to the Constitutional Court has become a pedestrian […]

Formula For Plain (Bland) Packaging

As of 6 December this year you will no longer see a nurturing mother feeding her happy baby a bottle of formula milk as an advertisement in any newspaper, magazine, on a website or on television. In fact, you will not see the names of any brand or logos of infant formula, follow-up formula or […]

In vino veritas – Mettenheimer v Zonquasdrif Vineyards

While trade mark infringement cases are not unusual, there are few decisions in which the central issue which required determination was whether the respective goods involved were so similar that it would gave rise to a likelihood of deception or confusion.  It is for this reasonthat the decision in Mettenheimer & Another v Zonquasdrif Vineyards […]

Government’s reflections on the world of Intellectual Property

INTRODUCTION Have you ever basked in the warm sunshine of a glorious summer’s day, in daydreaming mode, and allowed your mind simply to wander at random? You start with a thought, you turn it over in your mind, and then a point is reached where you go off at a tangent and muse over some […]

The Rooibos Rush

South Africa is no stranger to the fever that accompanies the discovery of gemstones or precious metal in a particular region. Indeed, for decades the mineral riches of our nation were legendary across the world and the object of several battles for imperial, colonial or feudal control over the diamond, gold, platinum and coal fields […]

Brand Genocide

We all know GOOGLE. It is a facility that enables us to source information on the Internet. The word GOOGLE indicates the identity of a particular service provider and distinguishes those services from similar services rendered by others, such as YAHOO. Each service provider designates its particular services by means of such a mark. The […]

A Different Ball Game

Readers will have observed from perusing the articles on this blog that I have commented on a number of occasions on the proclaimed intention of the Government to pass legislation curtailing or prohibiting the use of trade marks on tobacco products, both on their packages and in advertising.  I have expressed the view that by […]