Includes bibliographical references. / Protection of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions of indigenous communities is one of the most contentious and complicated issues on both international and national agendas. The historical development of the protection of intellectual property in the wake of the industrial revolution and its subsequent jurisprudential justification, based on private property rights, pushed TK and the practice based on it, outside the purview of the formal intellectual protection regime. There is substantial evidence that TK has in past decades been used in a range of industries and has accordingly led to new products as well as the development of existing products. Evidence of this can be found in the areas of special foods and beverages, the cosmetic sector, personal care, agriculture, horticulture and pharmaceuticals. Industries sometimes make use of this knowledge to formulate new products, which they do in a slightly different manner so as to market the products as their own. Currently, there are certain products in Namibia that use the traditional terms of products as trademarks. Despite the fact that some of these terms are not registered with the Ministry of Trade and Industries, these owners enjoy common law protection under trademark law. This is especially so for well-known products such as Omaere milk, which is a product of the Namibia Dairies (Pty) Ltd. The term Omaere is used by the OvaHerero and OvaHimba speaking communities of Namibia and Botswana to refer to traditionally processed curdled milk. The Namibian Dairies (Pty) Ltd has been making use of this name for one of their curdled milk products for more than 15 years. During this period the company has done such excessive marketing of the product that this name has come to be regarded as their trademark. Reviewing it from this perspective, one can conclude that no-one else could use this name to refer to their milk products, as it has come to be considered as a product of the Namibia Dairies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/12934 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Nghihalwa, Saima Litauleni |
| Contributors | Nkomo, Marumo |
| Publisher | University of Cape Town, Faculty of Law, Intellectual Property Research Unit |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, LLM |
| Format | application/pdf |
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