Milk: The legal battle over trade marks

THE battle of the milks – First Choice vs Fresh Choice – raged before the Gauteng High Court, with the owner of First Choice asking that its competitor be interdicted from using the Fresh Choice logo, as it claimed it is similar to their trade mark.

- ZELDA VENTER

Woodlands Dairy, a long-standing, family-owned dairy operator in the Eastern Cape, turned to the Gauteng High Court Pretoria, to obtain an order against its competitor.

It produces an extensive range of dairy products, including UHT milk, which is marketed and sold in outlets throughout South Africa. It sells these products under the name and brand First Choice and it owns this trade mark in South Africa.

Sansom Farming CC is also a dairy operator, on a substantially smaller scale than the applicant. It is based in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in the Eastern Cape.

It produces milk and other dairy products under its registered trade mark Fresh Choice.

The applicant’s case was that it has statutory and common law trade mark rights in the First Choice trade mark as well as the “domino” name, freshchoice.co.za as it is well-known and has acquired a secondary meaning as a mark of origin of its dairy products.