Mondi SA has won a com­pany name dis­pute after the Com­pan­ies Tribunal ordered a com­pany called Mondi Work­place Ser­vices to change its name, find­ing it is con­fus­ingly sim­ilar to Mondi SA’s name and trade­marks, reports Business Day.

Mondi SA is a sub­si­di­ary of Mondi Plc, the inter­na­tional pack­aging and paper com­pany whose shares are lis­ted on the Lon­don and Johan­nes­burg stock exchanges.

On the JSE it has a mar­ket cap of about R68bn.  Its shares ended yes­ter­day down 1.31% at R153.61.

Mondi owns forestry, pulp, paper and pack­aging busi­nesses in SA, along with numer­ous registered trade­marks, which is why it brought the com­pany name objec­tion.

In its decision, the tribunal ruled in favour of Mondi SA and dir­ec­ted Mondi Work­place Ser­vices to adopt a new name that ‘does not incor­por­ate Mondi and is not con­fus­ingly and/or decept­ively sim­ilar to the applic­ant’s’.

The dis­pute was brought in terms of sec­tion 11 of the Com­pan­ies Act.

Mondi Work­place Ser­vices was registered in 2023, with Mondi SA arguing the name fell foul of the Act because ‘Mondi’ was its dom­in­ant, most recog­nis­able ele­ment – visu­ally, phon­et­ic­ally and con­cep­tu­ally indis­tin­guish­able from its own trade­mark.

Any­one com­ing across the name, it said, would reas­on­ably assume the busi­ness was part of the Mondi group.

That, Mondi SA argued, exposed it to repu­ta­tional risk it had not signed up for, and it asked the tribunal to force a name change. It also asked for a fall­back, ask­ing that if Mondi Work­place Ser­vices did not com­ply, the Com­pan­ies and Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Com­mis­sion (CIPC) should step in and rename it using its regis­tra­tion num­ber fol­lowed by ‘(Pty) Ltd’.

Accord­ing to the papers, Mondi Work­place Ser­vices did not con­test the applic­a­tion.

The tribunal found the name could give mem­bers of the pub­lic the impres­sion that Mondi Work­place Ser­vices is asso­ci­ated with Mondi SA.

The tribunal ruled that Mondi Work­place Ser­vices has 60 days from receiv­ing the rul­ing to file the amend­ment to its memor­andum of incor­por­a­tion.

If it misses that win­dow – spe­cific­ally, three months from the date of the order – the CIPC would have to step in and rename it using a place­holder.

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