Fake footballers' signatures; kikoi returns

Trade marks send pair to jail

The IPKat learns from the BBC that Graeme Walker and Faisal Madani, who respectively sold and supplied fake football memorabilia, have received custodial sentences for fraudulent trading, breaches of the Trade Descriptions Act and infringement of the criminal provisions of the Trade Marks Act. The pair sold fake autographs of sporting personalities including Sir Alex Ferguson, Cristiano Ronaldo, Roy Keane, Steven Gerrard and Jonny Wilkinson. However, Walker was cleared of the headline-maker: selling a signed photograph of Michael Owen.

The IPKat was curious as to what the relevant trade marks actually are. A quick look at the Trade Marks Register suggests in the names in plain script, rather than the signatures themselves. The Kat wonders whether the footballers could have got their signatures registered. Would they have been memorable enough for consumers to use them to distinguish?

KIKOY applicant skirts the issue

Readers with good medium term memories may remember an application filed to protect KIKOY as a UK trade mark noted on the IPKat just over a year ago. This was controversial because it is the phonetic equivalent of ‘kikoi’, a form of Kenyan fabric used for skirts. The Daily Nation reports that the application has failed. However, none of the exciting trade mark issues (phonetic equivalent of a descriptive word, the morality of ‘locking out’ the tranditional users from marketing goods under the name in the UK) got an airing. Instead, the application was thrown out because the applicant failed to file a TM8.

The IPKat wonders if the applicant saw the outcry and thought better of it.