Monkagedi Gaotlhobogwe
20 October 2005
After becoming the first citizens to commercialise the traditional ginger drink, known as "gemmere" Blitz Services Pty Ltd, are now locked in a bitter war with a rival company, Coolant - trading as Gemere - over the use of the brand name, Gemere.
Their attempt to stop Coolant from using the name Gemere was met with a defiant response from Coolant managing director Gomolemo Mogapi, who referred his challengers to his legal partners should they wish to pursue the issue further.
Blitz Services claim the new rival product does not only pose a threat as a competitor but also say they have qualms about the quality of the drink, which they claim is below standard. "Their drink is too strong and not so tasty like ours. People who drink it may conclude that it is our product. We believe the newcomers are trying to hijack our success. We toiled in the beginning to establish gemmere as a commodity. No one thought it could be done until we marketed the commodity in shops, with amazing success. Now they (the rival company) can just approach any shop that sells our product and deliver their product as if it is ours. We are worried because our rivals have copied even the colours of our letterhead so that the difference between them and us is so slight to a consumer.
"Anyone who looks at our bottle and their product cannot easily tell the difference and that is bad for any business. You do not want the consumer to confuse your product for someone elses," said the marketing manager of Blitz services Ookeditse Gaborone.
The matter has now reached the office of the Minister of Trade and Industry, Neo Moroka, after Blitz Services appealed to him. They want the ministry to intervene and stop this replication. However the complainants are the first to admit that they have been getting little help from the ministry. "After they gave us the go ahead to trade as Gemmere, it was the ministry's duty to ensure that our trading name was protected, so why did they go ahead and register a company whose trading name is so similar to ours," wondered Gaborone.
However after querying the ministry about the discrepancy, Blitz Services were told that they couldn't have exclusive rights to gemere as it is in the public domain. The reply by the ministry has irked Blitz Services who are now wondering why in the first place the ministry allowed them to trade as Gemmere when they knew they could not protect them from anyone else using the same trading name. Minister Moroka's written response to Blitz Services says his ministry has only allowed Blitz Services to use Gemmere as a business name and not as a trade mark.
"The name Gemmere is in the public domain, it cannot be monopolised by being allowed to be protected as a trademark. This would be devoid of reasoning in the same way that would be allowing someone to register as a trade mark the words "orange juice' so as to exclude any other person from using the words orange juice in the name of a product of citrus fruit juice that is known and in the public domain.
However Blitz Services argue that there are many methods of brewing gemmere and that the taste of the drink differs depending on the recipe. Despite the Minister's hope that his reply would now put the matter to rest, Blitz Services have vowed to take the matter further so that they are the sole trade mark holders of Gemmere or anything that sounds like it.
Blitz Services was formed by a group of young Batswana who found themselves without jobs after returning from overseas studies in 2004. The drink, gemmere, which is found in most shops in and around Gaborone, has proved to be a hit especially in summer.
Ernest Tsogotlho, executive director of Blitz services, says he has every reason to believe that a certain shop owner is behind the formation of the rival company.
"There was this shop where our product used to do very well. The owner once told us that he knows people who can produce gemmere and that he would ask them to package it.
When the new gemmere drink first hit the market it was seen at that shop, we suspect the owner of that shop is behind it," Tsogotlho said. Tsogotlho has gone to the extent of writing his new rivals a warning letter to desist from using the name gemmere as it is registered under them.
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