{"id":565834,"date":"2024-10-18T09:07:40","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T07:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=565834"},"modified":"2024-10-18T09:10:25","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T07:10:25","slug":"big-takealot-win-for-biltong-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/565834-big-takealot-win-for-biltong-business.html","title":{"rendered":"Big Takealot win for biltong business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Takealot has removed all “Takis Fuego” tortilla chips products from its marketplace after local brand Takis Biltong seized the trademarks of Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This follows a nine-year court battle between Takis Biltong and Grupo Bimbo over the “Takis” trademark in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grupo Bimbo is a large multinational food company listed on the Mexico Stock Exchange that owns over 100 well-known brands, including Thomas Bagels, Harvest Gold bread, and Bimbo Blanco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also one of the largest bakery companies in the world, with about 140,000 employees and a presence in 35 countries, including South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After ruling in Takis Biltong’s favour, the court also issued a costs order against Grupo Bimbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it failed to pay Takis Biltong’s costs, the local company attached 89 of Grupo Bimbo’s trademarks in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These will be sold to recoup legal bills accumulated over the nine-year court battle.

The courts have also ordered that the Takis Fuego trademark be cancelled on the grounds that it is too similar to Takis Biltong and is likely to cause confusion in the minds of consumers.

Takis Biltong registered its trademark in May 2007 under the category ‘meat, fish, poultry, and game, preserved meats, meat extracts, sausages’.

Grupo Bimbo registered the Takis Fuego trademark in 2012 under a separate food category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It later came to light that Takis Fuego tortilla chips were being sold in South Africa, creating the impression among some consumers that the products were the same brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takis Biltong declared a dispute in 2015 and notified Grupo Bimbo of the trademark infringement.

In 2018, the Pretoria High Court ruled in favour of Grupo Bimbo and decided there was no infringement as the two trademarks were not necessarily identical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This decision was overturned in favour of Takis Biltong on appeal in the same court, which ordered that the Takis Fuego trademark be cancelled.

The appeal in the Pretoria High Court ruled that the Takis Fuego logo is visually deceptive or confusingly similar to the Takis logo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of different fonts and the addition of words such as “Barcel” and “Fuego” to the Takis name by the Mexican company was not sufficient to remove the deception or confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grupo Bimbo appealed the decision in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), which again ruled in favour of Takis Biltong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SCA also ordered the Mexican company to pay Takis Biltong’s substantial legal costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Trademarks Act does not allow for the registration of marks that are deceptive or “likely to deceive or cause confusion or are the same as or similar to already registered marks”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Despite these rulings, Takis Fuego products continue to be sold around the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grupo Bimbo claimed in its court papers that third-party suppliers were responsible for this violation of the court order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it still refused to pay the legal costs ordered by the courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citing cash flow problems, Grupo Bimbo declined to pay the full legal costs and offered a reduced payment to be settled in instalments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Even this they did not do,” said Andrew Papadopoulos, attorney at Kisch IP which represents Takis Biltong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This left us no option but to attach what South African assets Grupo Bimbo possesses, and these are mainly in the form of trademarks.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papadopoulos said the sheriff of the court attached the trademarks in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taki Aristides, who co-owns the Takis Group with his siblings Mike and Gina, said the company was forced to protect its trademark rights in court as all other remedies had failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is a family-owned business built up over 40 years, and our customers were understandably confused when another Takis brand started appearing on shop shelves around the country,” said Aristides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Part of the legal responsibility of owning a trademark is that you monitor the market for infringements, which is what we did.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aristides said they started to lose market share and spent millions of rands defending their trademarks in the courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When Grupo Bimbo refused to honour the court order and pay our bills, we were left with no choice but to attach its trademarks in SA as we seek to recover our costs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local brand Takis Biltong scored a major victory against multinational food giant Grupo Bimbo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":565842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,18],"tags":[995],"class_list":["post-565834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-internet","tag-takealot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565834"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565834"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565873,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565834\/revisions\/565873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}