Trademark battle in its element

THE average person might struggle to draw a link between skateboarding culture and science education, in fact some might suggest they are at opposite ends of the teenage spectrum.

But one Western Australian small business has found that when it comes to the legal business of intellectual property protection, the distinction is less obvious.

Naomi van Bentum has developed an educational card game based on the elements in the periodic table, called Elementaurs. Having sold 2,000 decks in the past year, mainly through schoolteachers, she wants to expand beyond her Western Australian base and help improve kids’ science knowledge.

But in seeking to register this name as a trademark, Ms van Bentum has run into the world of big business brand protection encountered by numerous WA small businesses in the past.

In the latest instance, it is surf industry giant Billabong that brought in lawyers to challenge Ms van Bentum’s trademark application because it claimed it might be confused with its own Element brand, which is predominantly focused on the skateboarding scene.

Having created her game to appeal to children from primary grades to middle school, the inventor is disappointed at the cost of dealing with a legal issue she believes makes no sense at all.

Billabong, Ms van Bentum said, don’t even want to allow her to put her product name on a t-shirt.

“I think what they are saying is unreasonable,” she said.

In 2002, Malaga-based Galvin Engineering overcame a long legal challenge to the use of its initials in a logo by US giant, General Electrics. Around the same time, lifestyle magazine Scoop won against a national publisher trying to use the same name for a raunchy periodical.

Two years ago, Perth flat screen mounting manufacturer Skunkworks saw off another US giant, Lockheed Martin, over efforts to trademark the company’s name in Australia. In 2006, WA company Uggs-N-Rugs won a two-year legal battle over the right to use the name ‘ugh-boot’ against the North American giant Deckers Outdoor Corporation, which owns the trademark in the US.

But this year, WA trekking trowel manufacturer Sea to Summit dropped the name iPood in favour of Pocket Trowel after being challenged by Apple over the similarity to its iPod.