More on KIKOY

David Mugonyi, writing from London for the Sunday Nation (print edition), reports that the Kenya government is to apply for registration of the word KIKOY as a trademark. This comes after attempts by a UK company to register the word failed.

Curiously the report indicates that the registration will be done through WTO. How this will be done is rather difficult to understand. For one, WTO does not register Trade marks, and more importantly KIKOY is a descriptive word, and probably the reason why the UK Company failed to defend its case for registration in UK. Against this background, it is difficult to understand how the government which in the first place opposed the registration of the mark on the basis that the word KIKOY connotes nothing else but the name of a Kenyan traditional fabric will be able to argue that it can now serve as a trademark.

Kikoy battle continues

The Daily Nation reports that the attempt by a British Company to register the word KIKOY as trade mark in UK has failed.

This seems to mark the end of the affair which began in 2006 when Kikoy Company UK Limited applied to register the trade work. See an earlier post here.

From the Nation report it does appear that Kikoy Company failed to file a counter statement by the deadline of 7th March 2008, meaning the application for registration was deemed to have been withdrawn.

What is the implication of this outcome?

In my opinion it makes no difference whether KIKOY was registered as a trade mark or not and indeed there are other KIKOYs registered in UK (as pictured above). These registrations have not prevented other people from selling their kikoys in UK as the writer suggests.

To me the writer seems to have got it wrong on a number of issues. First he writes that the Government has not taken steps to protect the fabric. Is there justification for protection? The very essence of objecting to registration in UK is that KIKOY is a description word that should not be monopolized by any particular person, not even in Kenya.

Secondly, he reports that had the Kikoy Company managed to register the trade mark, it would have obtained a virtual monopoly over the use of the word and they would have stopped any other person from selling Kikoys in the UK and elsewhere.

I beg to differ with this observation, for the fact that you cannot have any trade mark rights over a descriptive word. In the first place, it would have been impossible for the Kikoy Company to enforce the trade mark. I believe there are many cases in UK that have resolved that for one to infringe a trade mark, the infringing mark must be used as trademark.

The question is whether any other person selling kikoys in UK would be using the word KIKOY as a trade mark. Kikoy is basically the name of the product and any other person selling the products in UK or Europe could actually argue that their use of the word KIKOY was not in trade mark sense, rather they were trading in goods called KIKOY. For example, assuming some one managed to register the word BREAD as a trade mark in Kenya with respect to bread, the registration would not stop other people from selling their bread in Kenya. To me the registration would be meaningless and the owner would be actually paying rent to the Trade Office registry for worthless protection.

About kikoy here and here.

Should Kenya petition UNESCO for KIONDO and KIKOY to be included in the world heritage list?

The Sydney Morning Herald and the Timesonline report that the French President, Sarkozy has called on UNESCO to include French cuisine on the world heritage list.

“We have the best gastronomy in the world”, declared the President at the opening of an agriculture show in Paris, and he wants France to be the first country to apply to UNESCO for its "gastronomic tradition" to be recognized as a world heritage. Already there is a national campaign lead by leading chefs who fear that French cuisine is threatened by global food industry.

Our own Lake Turkana National Parks, Mount Kenya National Parkt and Lamu Old Town are some of the sites appearing on the UNESCO heritage list.

This brings us to the two issues of the Kiondo and the Kikoy which have generated heated debate both locally and internationally over what we regard as “theft” of our cultural heritage by developed countries.

Shouldn’t Kenya also start a campaign to have the kiondo and kikoy listed as cultural heritage?

It will be recalled that Kikoy was in the news last year when a company in UK applied to register the word KIKOY as a trade mark - UK trade mark application number 2431257. However an opposition was filed to stop the intended registration and the matter is yet to be determined by the UK Patent Office.

The claim that Kiondo is patented by some unnamed Japanese is an emotive issue in Kenya. However no proof has been put forth to back the claim of any one having patented the kiondo in any country.

Unlike the KIKOY issue in which it is possible to identify the trade mark application number and the applicant, we have never heard of any Japanese individual or company claiming ownership of a Kiondo patent and the patent number has never been cited in any of the debates.

As a way of protecting these two Kenyan icons, should we also campaign for their inclusion in the world heritage list as cultural items?