Pretoria - Fifa is hauling a South African entrepreneur and the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office into court over a design that an entrepreneur has legally registered. The design is for a keyholder with the year, a vuvuzela and a soccer ball. In 2004 Grant Abrahamse, a Cape entrepreneur, registered a keyholder design with a soccer theme with the Department of Trade & Industry. This affords him the sole right to use the design for 15 years. Fifa is dragging him and the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office to court. The soccer controlling body accuses him of ambush marketing and insists that the registration be cancelled. Apart from producing a small number of samples with a view to marketing, Abrahamse has not yet sold any of his keyholders. He wanted to enter into an agreement with Fifa in terms of which he would manufacture his product with their permission, but Fifa was apparently not interested. He now has to continue his struggle in the Pretoria High Court, or else pay Fifa's legal costs, which already amount to hundreds of thousands of rands.
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