{"id":551868,"date":"2007-03-27T07:13:45","date_gmt":"2007-03-27T07:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/551868-legal-battle-over-proper-use-of-24.html"},"modified":"2007-03-27T07:13:45","modified_gmt":"2007-03-27T07:13:45","slug":"legal-battle-over-proper-use-of-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/551868-legal-battle-over-proper-use-of-24.html","title":{"rendered":"Legal battle over proper use of \u201824\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entrepreneur Christopher Riley was warned this month to stop using Properties24.co.za as his business\u2019 website address. <\/font><\/p>\n

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 \u201cpassing off\u201d of Media24\u2019s own Property24.com. <\/font><\/p>\n

In late 2005, Riley aggressively opposed a similar demand about two other sites that he had registered which contained \u201c24\u201d in the address. <\/font><\/p>\n

He then decided to register as many \u201c24\u201d names as he could, to prove that the company could not hold claim to the \u201cgeneric term\u201d, he said. <\/font><\/p>\n

While Media24\u2019s CEO Russell Hanly agreed that this may be true, he said that Riley was \u201ca little too close for comfort in this one\u201d, and that \u201cProperty\u201d and \u201cProperties\u201d were too similar to ignore. <\/font><\/p>\n

Janine Hollesen, of Jan S de Villiers Attorneys, Property24\u2019s representatives in the matter, said that Riley\u2019s latest actions were a legal infringement and that he was \u201cpassing off\u201d on Media24\u2019s good name. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is sufficient reputation and goodwill resting in Property24 to entitle my client to prevent any third parties from using similar domain names,\u201d she said. <\/font><\/p>\n

She also pointed out that search results on Google for \u201cProperties24.co.za\u201d showed that the search title for Riley\u2019s site brought up the search result \u201cWelcome to Property24\u201d. <\/font><\/p>\n

Riley conceded that he would probably have to buckle in this case, but said it was \u201cwrong for them to bully the small guys\u201d. <\/font><\/p>\n

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 \u201cProperty24\u201d. <\/font><\/p>\n

Hanly said that even if this was the case, the process of registering the trademark was in place. <\/font><\/p>\n

Bernadette Heever, a lawyer at Webber Wentzel Bowens said that \u201cMedia 24 has a reputation to uphold and their goodwill goes a long way in the market, so they do have quite a good case\u201d.<\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LEGAL tension surrounding Media24\u2019s claim to the numerals \u201c24\u201d more than two years ago has spurred one entrepreneur to undertake an all-out campaign that has him butting heads with the media giant. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}