Court decisions regarding company names are rare. So the recent
decision of the Western Cape High Court in the case of
Bloomberg's Posterity Investments (Pty) Ltd v The Registrar
of Companies and Bloomberg LLP is worth discussing. What
makes company name cases interesting from an intellectual property
(IP) law point of view is that they deal with issues that are very
similar to the issues that are dealt with in trade mark
infringement and passing-off cases. That's because the law says
that a company name will be refused if it is
'undesirable' or 'calculated to cause
damage', and this has been interpreted to mean that the
name must not cause confusion.
The issue in this case was whether the name Bloomberg's
Posterity Investments (Pty) Ltd was undesirable or calculated to
cause damage, given the renown of the US company Bloomberg, which
is of course involved in various aspects of financial services
including software, data services, news, analytics and
