Common sense has prevailed in a naming dispute over a $40 million hotel development in Invercargill, the Invercargill Licensing Trust says.
Photo: 123RF
The Langlands will be 4.5-star, 80-guest room hotel in central Invercargill, forming part of the city's inner city redevelopment.
The Invercargill Licensing Trust, New Zealand's oldest and highest profile licensing trust, has a monopoly on the development of premises licensed for the sale of alcoholic beverages in the city. Its profits fund school, sports, cultural and welfare causes in the area.
In early 2019, following a city-wide competition to find a new name for the then-proposed hotel, it announced the development would be The Langlands.
But Murray Stott, who called himself a trade mark agent and global sponsorship broker, took a disliking to the name and moved to trade mark it to prevent its use by the Invercargill Licensing Trust.
The application was made by Database Publishing Limited - a company owned by Stott - on 8 May.
"It's [The Langlands] a useless name. It does nothing," Stott told RNZ.
"It's got no imagination to it."
But the trust's chief executive, Chris Ramsay, said the name was chosen following a competition to brand the new hotel.
"The name was awarded through a public contest," Ramsay said.
"We went to the Invercargill public and we had a resource consent condition that indicated we had to have a bit of a nod to the past and Langlands was the former developer of the site and was someone who helped frame old Invercargill and set us up as the very profitable city we were. So the name was very well supported in a public competition we ran.
"It's a nice name. It's a good, strong name and has links to both Southland and Otago."
The trust's position was they had a legal right to the name and its lawyer contacted Stott earlier this week to outline that, Ramsay said.
Following that interaction Stott withdrew his application and, to protect themselves in future, the trust had now submitted an application of its own.
"We did our due diligence at the time of getting the name, in that we checked it wasn't trade marked or being used by anyone else but [trade marking] is not something that we would have normally done and, in fact, I'd be speaking for the majority of hospitality businesses that they wouldn't consider it's something that they would need to do," Ramsay said.
"So is it a wake up call? Yes it is, I suppose. It's a disappointing way to get a wake up call but at the same time once bitten, twice shy, so we'll be protecting ourselves for sure in the future."
The trust was pleased the dispute was solved with relative ease.
"It's positive news for ILT and the people of Invercargill because it does protect the name and it's a name that's been a significant feature in Invercargill's history as far as development goes and . . . the people of Invercargill were very keen for it to be the name. The family and the town will be very happy, I'm sure," Ramsay said.
"Common sense has prevailed and it allows us to now totally refocus back on getting the hotel built and open, so the city of Invercargill has a fantastic asset for its future."
Auckland Law School senior lecturer Rob Batty said it provided a cautionary tale to businesses.
"The normal advice from IP lawyers is file early, put a stake in the ground, and therefore you're protected moving forward," he said.
"When you file an application it is normally at least seven months until your trade mark is registered, so just filing your application doesn't give you rights to stop other people, per se. You've still got to go through this registration system.
"An examiner from IPONZ [Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand] will look at the trade mark, determine whether it meets the requirements of the Act and there's also an opportunity for third parties to oppose registration.
"So in the potential dispute of this context it would have been open for the Invercargill Licensing Trust to oppose the application . . . and prevent it from being registered."
They could have looked at preventing the application on the grounds it was filed in bad faith, which the Act had provision for.