Groucho Marx famously said that he would never want to belong to
any club that accepted people like him as members. So what is
South Africa to make of the Madrid club? Well, the club would
certainly accept South Africa as a member, in the same way that it
has recently accepted India, Mexico, New Zealand, Rwanda and
Tunisia. As well as Southern African states like Botswana,
Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia. Not to mention
economic powerhouses like Australia, China, the European nations
(including the EU), Japan, Korea, Russia and the USA.
What's the Madrid club you ask? You can be forgiven for not
knowing what it is, because its real name is the Madrid Union. In
fact, these days, it's more commonly referred to as the Madrid
Protocol, which is one of the two treaties that created it, the
other being the Madrid Agreement. If that all sounds very
complicated don't worry it is, but all you need to remember is
that, in the context of trade marks, the
