ARN’s rebranded Kiis 1065 Sydney faces legal threat from Melbourne’s Kiss FM
Melbourne community radio station Kiss FM is set to launch a fight for its name following the Australian Radio Network’s move to rebrand its Sydney station Mix FM to Kiis 1065.
The ARN received a legal letter from the Melbourne station calling on it to cease and desist from using the station’s name – regardless of the difference in spelling – for infringing on its property rights.
Tim Byrne, manager of the Melbourne station told Radio Info: “In a David and Goliath battle or scenario akin to ‘the vibe’ in the iconic Australian film The Castle, Kiss FM Dance Music Australia is being forced to defend its rights to exclusively use on an unrestricted basis its Kiss FM name in Australia.”
According to IPA Australia the Kiss FM trade mark lapsed in 1999 and the application for the Kiis FM trade mark was approved in November with no opposition. However a legal letter from Kiss FM to the ARN states:
“Should your company continue with the Kiis/Kiss rebrand, our clients hereby put you on notice that you will be infringing its various intellectual property rights in the Kiss brand.
“The words Kiss or Kiss FM and the words Kiis or Kiis FM (despite their different spelling to our clients’ Kiss trade marks) are substantially identical or deceptively similar to our clients’ well-established Kiss trade marks.
“Should you continue with the rebrand of your company’s radio station to the Kiss/ Kiis rebrand, we hereby put you on notice that your company will be infringing our clients’ common law trade mark rights.
“Should your company’s conduct infringe our clients’ common law and/or registered rights in the Kiss trade marks, our clients hereby put you on notice that it will be forced to issue legal proceedings against you and/or your company in order to protect their rights.”
A spokeswoman for ARN said although the Kiis trademark was registered across all states, the radio network had no intention of rebranding its Mix stations outside of Sydney.
“Sydney’s Kiis 1065 – which is spelt differently to Melbourne’s Kiss FM – is a station that’s being built specifically for Sydney,” she said.
“As a Sydney brand, with a completely different music format and audience to Kiss FM’s Melbourne dance station, ARN are clearly not looking to compete with this community station. We’ve been in discussions with Kiss FM on all of this and those discussions are continuing.”
Stupid name for a station anyway. I could do better
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quire right
would you not check to see what was out there already before naming your new station?
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If you want to defend your trademark you really should renew it.
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Wouldn’t a check of existing station names around Australia be one of THE first things you would do when considering a new station ID..? I mean, seriously, despite this being Kiis vs Kiss, the mere existence of Kiss FM should have raised a red flag with the powers that be at Mix/ARN. Maybe it did and they just figured they’d ignore it and power through, just like Apple did with the iPhone (a brand which was in fact owned by Cisco at the time, but Jobs went ahead and launched his ‘iPhone’ all the same).
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Think Goliath may win this one.
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Your article states that “the application for the Kiis FM trade mark was approved in November with no opposition.” In actual fact, Kiss FM still have the right to oppose the application since the notice of intention to oppose must be filed within 3 months of the trade mark being advertised as accepted. Kiss FM may have have an argument under common law.
A common law trade mark is an unregistered trade mark which has been used in relation to certain goods or services to such an extent that it is recognised as distinguishing the goods and services of the business using that mark from those of other businesses. Even though it is not registered, in certain circumstances the law will prevent another trader from using the same or a similar trade mark in a way which is considered unfair.
Australian Radio Network should know better.
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“Clarity” is 100% correct. If they are able to see it through they might actually win. Can you imagine someone starting a station called Miix.
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Actually KIIS/Mix encountered a situation like this when they first switched to FM in 1994. 2Day-FM had been using the slogan “Always a better music mix” for a few years and then Mix-FM came along. 2Day-FM were forced to drop the slogan and any use of the word mix, very difficult since the word was commonly being used to refer to music, as in mix tapes, music mix, etc. Mix-FM were able to successfully hijack a word that was in common usage, and have it refer specifically to their own stations.
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