But in 2021, Basefun, planning to reinvent the game, challenged the Somers Enterprise’s trademark, claiming non use. A delegate of the Registrar of Trade Marks agreed.
But Somers Enterprises Australia, owned by Somers and wife Julie Somers, a former Australian Ballet senior dancer, appealed that decision in the Federal Court.
We did enjoy the incongruity in a Federal Court judgement of seeing a snap of comedian Glenn Robbins demonstrating the game with a Phar Lap sign stuck on his forehead.
“While I give weight to the delegate’s decision as a skilled and experienced person, I am required to approach the matter afresh,” Bennett said, before deciding to uphold the appeal and award victory to Somers, who preferred to remain politely mute in his triumph.
“Thank you for your enquiry. Our client respectfully declines to comment in relation to any legal proceedings which relate to him or his interests,” said Somers’ lawyer Jonathan Feder, a partner at law firm K&L Gates. Basefun politely declined to comment.
Submissions on costs from both parties are due this week.
Square-ing up
Last year, comedian Dan Ilic dumped plans to display a portrait of Gina Rinehart hated by the billionaire mining in New York’s Times Square after the artist, Vincent Namatjira, (who was never asked) expressed disapproval.
But this week, another very prominent Australian got their mug displayed in the Big Apple’s tourist epicentre. We’re talking about former NSW minister for customer service Victor Dominello, whose face is up there as part of security tech firm Okta’s Identity 25, an initiative to “honour pioneers shaping the future of digital identity”.
In a lengthy missive on LinkedIn, the platform on which Dominello posts up a storm in his post-political rebrand as hard-hustling tech-bro, the former senior Liberal said it was “surreal and humbling” to have his face up in Times Square.
Former NSW customer service minister Victor Dominello gets his face on a Times Square billboard.Credit: LinkedIn
After quitting politics, Dominello was tapped by former minister Bill Shorten to help the Albanese government on digital identity matters. In his LinkedIn post, he heaped praise for his Times Square turn on former premier Gladys Berejiklian, and the good people of NSW, for adopting digital drivers’ licences.
“In many ways, NSW became an 8 million-person sandbox for Westminster and Washminster democracies,” he enthused.
Dominello isn’t the first NSW Liberal to have their face on a Times Square billboard. In 2021, Ilic embarked on a crowdfunding campaign to display an image of then-prime minister Scott Morrison holding a lump of coal, to shame his government over its stance on climate change. That time, there were no obstacles.
Good neighbour
Well, this is awkward.
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When you are a group of prominent journalists on the board of a prominent journalism foundation, and you need to draft a letter crucial to the long-term future of said foundation, whom do you get to write the damn thing?
The esteemed Walkley Foundation has been locked in a civil war over a proposal to add two independent directors to its board, a move many champion as it would dilute the hold over the board enjoyed by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union, which has adopted political positions some journalists don’t agree with.
Last month there was an almighty split when half the board resigned after some of the country’s most esteemed journalists – including this masthead’s Kate McClymont and Nick McKenzie – co-signed a letter supporting the proposed overhaul.
The letter, which called for the MEAA to “expand and diversify” the board, to ensure the awards’ future success, was addressed to the then-board, which included ABC veteran Sally Neighbour.
Imagine our intrigue to learn that, when scanning the letter’s metadata, it was revealed that the author was none other than … Sally Neighbour.
Neighbour, along with the ABC’s Adele Ferguson and fellow Walkley director Victoria Laurie, were the board faction committed to adding two independent directors.
Neighbour declined to comment, but sources told CBD that veteran journalist Pam Williams was the driving force behind the letter, but reached out to Neighbour to help draft it, just to get everything accurate.
Read the full article here
