It’s not uncommon for a company that owns intellectual property (IP) such as trade marks, patents and copyright to grant another company the right to use that IP. The grant of the right to use IP is referred to as a ‘licence’, the company that grants the right is referred to as the ‘licensor’, and the company that gets the right is referred to as the ‘licensee’ ...
Domain names and trade marks are inextricably linked. The reason for this is simple – when a company needs to decide on a name at which it wants people to find it on the Internet, it generally opts for one of its own trade marks. As a result, the issues that crop up in trade mark disputes often crop up in domain name disputes too ...
The KZN High Court handed down a really interesting judgment in May 2013 in the case of Distell v KZN Wines & Spirits. The decision’s interesting because it not only looks at the issues that need to be considered in a trade mark infringement claim, but it also highlights the differences between trade mark infringement and passing off ...
Frequently asked questions on new foreign exchange rules: What currency should be used to pay the salaries of employees in Angola?The salaries of employees who are foreign exchange residents in Angola, irrespective of the sector of activity, must be paid in Kwanzas, the national currency. When Will i start to receive my salary in Kwanzas? As of 1 July 2013, in accordance with the implementation calendar of Law 2/12 of 13 January, defined by Order no ...
Counterfeiting continues to make the news. Locally, we’ve just had a report of a R10 million bust in the Vereeniging area, during which fake soaps, shampoos, clothing and bags were seized, and seven suspects from Malawi, Mozambique and China (no surprises there), were taken into custody.But we are increasingly getting reports of counterfeiting in product areas that go way beyond the traditional stomping ground of FMCG and luxury goods ...
We recently had a Namibian court decision in a passing off matter, in the case of Mega Power Centre CC t/a Talisman Plant and Tool Hire v Talisman Franchise Operations (Pty) Ltd. The decision is interesting for a number of reasons. First, passing off cases are fairly rare, so any new decision is welcome ...
There were two recent decisions – one in the USA and one in the UK – which dealt with the important but seldom-discussed concept of patent exhaustion. Patent exhaustion in essence means this: the initial authorised sale of a patented item terminates all patent rights to that item, for the reason that the owner of the patent (the patentee) has been rewarded for its ingenuity by that sale ...
Myriad Genetics is known as a leader in the market for diagnostic testing of BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations that have been linked to breast and ovarian cancer. These same diagnostic tests were recently in the celebrity press, as Angelina Jolie announced she had been tested positive for the mutations, resulting in her electing to have a preventative double mastectomy ...
Court decisions regarding company names are rare. So the recent decision of the Western Cape High Court in the case of Bloomberg’s Posterity Investments (Pty) Ltd v The Registrar of Companies and Bloomberg LLP is worth discussing. What makes company name cases interesting from an intellectual property (IP) law point of view is that they deal with issues that are very similar to the issues that are dealt with in trade mark infringement and passing-off cases ...
The issue of Adwords has become increasingly important in trade mark law. When you buy a word from Google as an Adword, this has the effect that whenever anyone enters that word as a search term, your pop-up advert will appear on the screen together with the so-called ‘natural results’. You can buy generic words as Adwords, but you can also buy words that happen to be trade marks ...
In 1989 the eminent South African jurist (the late) Prof.Dennis Cowen expressed the view that, by the end of the 1980s, South African environmental law was “a subject struggling to be born”. Nearly a quarter of century later South African environmental law is thriving as a “subject” in a manner that Prof. Cowen is unlikely ever to have anticipated. In addition, the business of environmental law has, in recent years, witnessed a rapid evolution ...
South Africa has a rapidly evolving climate change policy environment, which is in-keeping with the country¡¦s view of itself as a developing country leader in the climate change arena. Part of the policy environment includes attention to financial mechanisms that can be marshaled in support of the response to climate change. Flowing from the notion of using financial mechanisms in this manner, the National Treasury has taken initial steps towards the implementation of carbon taxation ...
South Africa has a rapidly evolving climate change policy environment, which is in-keeping with the country¡¦s view of itself as a developing country leader in the climate change arena. Part of the policy environment includes attention to financial mechanisms that can be marshaled in support of the response to climate change ...
The eighteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference took place in Doha, Qatar, from 26 November to 8 December 2012 – the first time that the Conference was held in the Middle East. There is some irony in the choice of location for the reason that Doha is the world’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gas. As is usual the Conference was a complex affair, with a plethora of meetings occurring simultaneously viz ...
Decree-Law 2/2005 of 27 December, which approved the Mozambican Commercial Code, makes it possible for Mozambican or foreign individuals or clients to set up business in Mozambique in one of six different ways: (i) general partnership (Sociedade em Nome Colectivo); (ii) limited partnership (Sociedade em Comandita); (iii) capital and industry partnership (Sociedade de Capital e Indústria); (iv) quota company (Sociedade por Quotas); (v) single person quota company (Sociedade Unipessoal por Quotas)
When does title in the ship pass from the shipbuilder to the shipowner? Can the parties agree to change when title will pass? Usually shipbuilding contracts are negotiated on standard forms such as the SAJ form produced by the Shipbuilders’ Association of Japan and the AWES form produced by the Association of European Shipbuilders and Shiprepairers. South African law generally recognises freedom of contract and accordingly parties to a contract are entitled to vary the terms by agreement ...
In 2012 the Western Cape High Court handed down a trade mark judgement that raised eyebrows. The facts were that the owner of a farm called Zonquasdrift had a trade mark registration for the mark Zonquasdrift covering wine (but not grapes). The owner of another farm in the area sold wine grapes under its name, Zonquasdrif Vineyards (no ‘t’ at the end) ...
The authorities seem to have gone on the offensive on the issue of counterfeits. In the run-up to Christmas, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has called on South Africans not to buy counterfeit goods, even if they are cheaper than the originals (as they invariably are) ...
We’ve written about the new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) on more than one occasion. This refers, of course, to the process whereby companies and organisations can register names – generic words, geographical names, brand names - as top level domain names. So, in the same way that there’s long been .com, .net and .info, you can now have .bank, .google and .capetown. Some 1900 applications have already been filed ...
The dispute resolution terms of engineering contracts can cause problems. An example is the recent case of Tubular Holdings (Pty) Ltd v DBT Technologies (Pty) Ltd, an unreported decision of South Gautend High Court. DBT Technologies - a subcontractor to Eskom in the Kusile Project 0 further contracted to Tubular Holdings in a deal worth some R 1.3 billion. Contract FIDIC's clause 20 governs the dispute resolution procedure. Clause 20 ...
