10
dated 6 June 2003 requiring key personnel to have the education, training and
experience to discharge their duties, inter alia, the ‘handling and storage of medicine
… to prevent confusion of products’. These control measures, no doubt, lessen the
likelihood of confusion or deception.
[23]
The conditions regulating the sale and prescription of prescribed medicines
significantly reduce the likelihood of confusion between marks associated with these
pharmaceuticals.10 Two approaches seem possible. These emerge from the
following passage in a European case –
‘In some Member States the view is taken that a likelihood of confusion should be accepted
more readily in the case of medicines on account of the serious consequences that can
ensue if the patient takes the wrong product. In other countries the view is taken that
pharmaceutical trade marks will not be confused so easily because the consumer has the
assistance of qualified professionals and is particularly attentive to differences between
marks for pharmaceutical products because of the importance of taking the right drug.’11
The court below followed the second approach. However, in Organon Laboratories
Ltd v Roche Products (Pty) Ltd12 Botha J said:
‘It seems to me, however, that in the cases quoted the Courts were mainly concerned with
drawing a distinction between products freely available to the public and products which
could only be dispensed on a doctor’s prescription. In the latter case, the possibility of errors
is substantially lessened by the various safeguarding circumstances, such as the fact that
the product can be sold only on the written authorisation of a doctor, and the fact that the
nature of the product requires the exercise of particular care on the part of both the doctor
and the dispensing pharmacist. (But even in this type of case, assuming that a differentiation
will be made between the various products as such, it occurs to me that the possibility of
confusion as to the origin of similar products having common features in their marks might
yet require scrutiny).’
10
Adcock-Ingram Laboratories Ltd v SA Druggists Ltd & another; Adcock-Ingram Laboratories Ltd v
Lennon Ltd 1983 (2) SA 350 (T) at 362 ff; [1983] 4 All SA 68 (T) at 79 ff; Organon Laboratories Ltd v
Roche Products (Pty) Ltd 1976 (1) SA 195 (T) at 200A-F.
11
Choay SA v Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH [2001] ETMR 64 para 19 and see Jeremy
Phillips Trade Mark Law A Practical Anatomy para 16.32 ff.
12
Organon Laboratories Ltd v Roche Products (Pty) Ltd 1976 (1) SA 195 (T) at 200D-G and cf the
remarks of Jeremy Phillips Trade Mark Law A Practical Anatomy para 16.32 ff.