Legal battle over proper use of ‘24’
Entrepreneur Christopher Riley was warned this month to stop using Properties24.co.za as his business’ website address.
He was told last week that Media24 was filing for a high court interdict to stop him from using the name as it constituted the “passing off” of Media24’s own Property24.com.
In late 2005, Riley aggressively opposed a similar demand about two other sites that he had registered which contained “24” in the address.
He then decided to register as many “24” names as he could, to prove that the company could not hold claim to the “generic term”, he said.
While Media24’s CEO Russell Hanly agreed that this may be true, he said that Riley was “a little too close for comfort in this one”, and that “Property” and “Properties” were too similar to ignore.
Janine Hollesen, of Jan S de Villiers Attorneys, Property24’s representatives in the matter, said that Riley’s latest actions were a legal infringement and that he was “passing off” on Media24’s good name.
“There is sufficient reputation and goodwill resting in Property24 to entitle my client to prevent any third parties from using similar domain names,” she said.
She also pointed out that search results on Google for “Properties24.co.za” showed that the search title for Riley’s site brought up the search result “Welcome to Property24”.
Riley conceded that he would probably have to buckle in this case, but said it was “wrong for them to bully the small guys”.
He said that while his site may be small-fry in comparison, he has argued that it is well within his rights as there is no trademark on “Property24”.
Hanly said that even if this was the case, the process of registering the trademark was in place.
Bernadette Heever, a lawyer at Webber Wentzel Bowens said that “Media 24 has a reputation to uphold and their goodwill goes a long way in the market, so they do have quite a good case”.
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