The issue of relinquishing copyright ownership in an original piece of writing, an artwork or a musical composition is a complex and delicate issue. Fortunately, South African law provides some guidelines as to what is morally fair for authors or creators of such works. The author of a work is typically the first owner
Trade mark protection is crucial for any brand owner, but it can sometimes create practical difficulties from a business perspective. When new trade mark applications are published by registries, information about a company or a brand owner’s new product or service is necessarily disclosed. As a result, brand owners often have to decide whether
Videotape, Escalator, Trampoline, Laundromat[1]. What do all of these words have in common? They were all once legally protectable trade marks which, due to the way in which they were used, have lost their distinctiveness and since become ‘generic’. But what does ‘generic’ mean? A generic trade mark is a word or phrase that
The Advertising and Regulatory Board (ARB) recently handed down a decision holding that the videos posted by comedians Skhumba Hlophe and Celeste Ntuli had breached the code on South African advertising. Hlophe and Ntuli uploaded videos on their Twitter accounts, promoting South Africa’s national lottery, Ithuba Holdings RF (Pty) Ltd (Ithuba). The videos were
In Thermos Hong Kong Limited v Doshi Ironmongers Limited (Civil Appeal (Application) E013 of 2021) [2022] KECA 544 (KLR), the Kenyan Court of Appeal had to determine whether a party had a second right to appeal an appellate decision from the High Court in relation to a trade mark dispute. To recap, this case was
A recent advertising parody has caused quite a stir at the watering hole, and left consumers questioning whether Hippo.co.za may have been out of line. The advert, which has already garnered over half a million views on YouTube alone, is a parody of OUTsurance’s “saver” advertisements that appears to spoof the original advertisements that featured Katlego
It has been just under a month since the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development released a directive warning that certain meat analogue products are in contravention of local regulations relating to the packaging and labelling of processed meat products in SA (Regulation 1283 of 2019) in that they bear product names
After thorough investigations by the firm’s internal private investigators, the Anti-Counterfeiting Team of Adams & Adams recently collaborated with the HAWKS (SAPS) in two provinces to clamp down on syndicates dealing in counterfeit engine lubricant and oil products. In the first operation in Gauteng, the team managed to identify and take down a manufacturing facility
Participating countries attending the 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland reached an agreement on 17 June 2022 to partially waive intellectual property restrictions on the manufacture and production of COVID-19 vaccines for the next five years. The partial waiver provides that developing nations may authorise the use of
Since 2021, we have seen the rise and rise of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). The NFT boom has been powered by the sale of NFT artwork, the first-ever tweet on Twitter and even popular memes, which have all fetched a pretty penny. The hype following the minting and sale of some NFTs has also brought
