By Zelda Venter
High Court Reporter
The fans due to crowd Loftus Versfeld on Saturday to watch the Bulls take on the Highlanders will once again have to make do without the Bulls Babes, as the trademark dispute between them and the Blue Bulls Company has yet to be resolved.
From comments posted on the internet, it is clear that the girls are being missed. "We want our babes," several of the messages read, while others complained that "the rugby is not the same without the babes".
"The only good thing about Loftus is the babes," one fan wrote.
Although by far in the minority, a few said they will not miss the scantily clad beauties, as their moves are "so suggestive that they belonged in the bedroom".
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It was hoped that Friday's Pretoria High Court clash between the Blue Bulls Company and Jump Sport CC which manages the babes, would bring closure to the ongoing dispute between the parties regarding the girls.
The urgent application, in which the Blue Bulls Company is trying to stop the close corporation from using the name Bulls Babes and the logos which go with it, was struck from the roll without the merits of the case being argued.
Judge Bill Prinsloo found that the Blue Bulls Company had abused the rules pertaining to urgent applications by not affording Jump Sport enough time to prepare its case. The judge said this was a complex matter and counsel acting for the babes needed reasonable time to prepare their case.
Intellectual property expert advocate Mabel Jansen SC, acting for the babes, took exception to the way in which the Blue Bulls Company went about enrolling the matter. She said this was a complex matter involving trademark registration and passing off of a product, and that it was unreasonable for the applicant to only afford her team two days to prepare answers to all the allegations made against them.
Jansen said the applicants knew since February 3 that the dispute was not going to be resolved and was heading to court. Yet the applicant only decided at the last minute to head to the urgent court which gave them (the babe's side) hardly any time to prepare. She said thousands of documents had to be studied.
Jansen also disputed the grounds for urgency stated by the Blue Bulls Company, that the issue was causing confusion among the public to the detriment of the company, as the Bulls Babes had become extremely popular among the Bulls fans. According to Jansen these could never be grounds for urgency.
Piet Louw SC, for the Bulls company, said the opposition had reasonable time to prepare their case.
In his judgment, and to the amusement of the public, Judge Prinsloo referred to the applicant as "one of the best teams in the world" and to the babes as "the well known cheerleaders".
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This article was originally published on page 1 of Pretoria News on March 13, 2010
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