BrandLaw South Africa

11/01/2023

Intangible assets account for more than 90% of the value of the average successful modern business.

Of this, trademark value depends on the industry, performance and the inherent distinctiveness and strength of the brand chosen.

With markets becoming increasingly global and more than 70% of english words already being trademarked, the value of exclusive rights in a name will only increase in future.

The most valuable brands in the world are currently in the Tech & Services industry, adding up to a total value of $2 Trillion and 37% of the top 100 brands. Next is Media and Telecom (with $1 Trillion or 20%), Retail and Consumer Goods (with $900 Billion or 17%) and Banking and Insurance ($634 Billion or 12%).

Trademarks are an important tool for protecting a company’s intellectual property and helping it stand out in a crowded market. But just how valuable are trademarks when it comes to a company’s overall value? The answer, as you might expect, isn’t straightforward. Distinctiveness One factor th...

23/04/2022

BEWARE: Don't buy into NFT & Metaverse hype blindly.

When buying 'property' in the metaverse and/or NFTs you are not a property 'owner' in the traditional sense and are not protected by the law of property.

Rather, such 'ownership' is governed by contract law. In other words you are at the mercy of the self-created rules (as embodied in their terms and conditions or license agreement) of whatever platform or company you are using. These rules are generally slanted to their benefit without recourse.

Despite the narrative that NFTs allow true ownership of digital items, it turns out that legal ownership in the metaverse is not that simple.

23/04/2022

The European Union’s Digital Services Act will force tech companies to remove illegal content and goods more quickly, explain to users and researchers how their algorithms work, and take stricter action on the spread of misinformation.

The EU’s new legislation is designed to explain the web to users

13/02/2022

11/02/2022

SPOTIFY v POTIFY

Swedish music streaming service SPOTIFY successfully opposed an application to register the mark POTIFY in relation to a cannabis delivery and dispensary app in the USA. Notably a number of similar marks including Clotify, Votify, Notify and Plotify have already been successfully registered.

POTIFY was sought to be registered in trade mark classes 9 (covering downloadable software and applications), 42 (covering non-downloadable Software as a Service [SaaS]) and 35 (covering providing websites and consumer information related to products and services) and 25 (covering clothing) - classes that SPOTIFY has also been registered in.

The opposition was sustained on the grounds of likelihood of diluting the strength and distinctiveness of the famous SPOTIFY mark by blurring. Other grounds, including the likelihood of confusion amongst consumers were therefore not considered.

SA Law

In South Africa such an opposition would likely also have been successful in this specific instance as the respective marks are very similar and cover similar software related goods or services. However, in SA the action would usually be based on the traditional ground of confusing similarity of two marks - where the similarity of the goods or services is an essential factor (while in dilution the goods or services do not need to be related).

While the SA Trade Marks Act also provides for infringement on the ground of dilution of the strength of a mark, in such cases SA courts require evidence of substantial economic (ie financial) harm - which can be assumed when the goods or services are related but not otherwise - as famously considered in the dispute between a t-shirt brand named ‘ ‘Laugh It Off” and SAB (South African Breweries) where the former parodied the latter’s Black Label beer brand as ‘Black Labour’. In this case the goods were considered unrelated and no economic harm, and by extension, no infringement was found.

For more information on trademarks in SA, USA or elsewhere contact us at [email protected] or brandlaw.co.za

08/02/2022

Wanted: Tech Unicorns

Swedish Venture Capital (VC) Fund Norrsken is setting up a R3 Billion Rand fund to invest in African tech start-ups. According to Norrsken Africa has relatively easy access to early-stage capital, but little money to scale up promising companies. It hopes to prove the investment case for Africa and provide not only A-round but a significant amount of B and C round funding. Capital injections and hands on help from people behind companies like Skype can be expected.

South Africa features heavily in early planning, with two of its four offices due to be in South Africa, one each in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The fund says it is looking for "relevant, disruptive, scalable and tech-enabled business models" in fintech, edtech, medtech, and market enablement.

DID YOU KNOW:

Intangible Assets like Intellectual property (IP), Copyright, Trademarks, Registered Designs and Patents account for 70% of firm assets and over 70% of equity value in developed countries. The value of intellectual property for Fortune 500 Companies exceeds 65% on average and exceeds 90% for certain companies within the group. IP can account for over 40% of the average business and is often not reflected on their balance sheet. However, 67% of companies own technological assets that they are failing to exploit and that are potentially eligible for intellectual property protections.

Securing your Intellectual Property and Trademarks is essential to secure investment funding. Investors want to see proof of your ownership over such intangibles.

BrandLaw provides a discounted package for software start-ups to protect their brand in all software and tech related classes, including classes 9 (downloadable software, apps and technological devices), 42 (technological services and software as a service [SaaS]), 35 (e-commerce and advertisings, HR, business management), 38 (telecommunications) and 36 (financial, insurance, property, real estate and monetary services) or 44 (medical and health services).

You can conduct a free search for your brand name at www.brandlaw.co.za/search.

Contact us at [email protected] or brandlaw.co.za for assistance.

Image Copyright: Mark Glancy

Read more: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/norrsken-african-fund-on-track-for-200-million-in-search-of-unicorns-2022-1