Branding stoush: Why Sky’s new name is already under fire

An ABC trademark left over from its news channel could stop Sky News Australia taking up its new name of News24, which a foreign broadcaster has already claimed on major social media platforms.

One intellectual property barrister said the public broadcaster had grounds to challenge Sky’s planned new name because it owned the “ABC News 24” trademark associated with its own 24-hour news channel.

And a major South African news outlet called News24 has a logo in the same colours that it uses on social media accounts with that handle on major platforms such as Facebook and X.

Sky News Australia, the News Corp-owned broadcaster, launched its new branding and name on Friday, which will come into effect later this year, at an event in Sydney where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese opened the station’s new studios. It had been forced to rebrand after Sky UK opted out of extending its current licensing arrangement with the Australian news network.

But the name, which leans on News Corp’s branding, resembles the name which the ABC’s News Channel was launched as in 2010. While the channel rebranded as ABC News Channel in 2017, it is often still colloquially referred to by its original name. The public broadcaster owns the trademark rights to the term “ABC News 24”, according to IP Australia, the federal government agency responsible for registering intellectual property.

The announcement “raised eyebrows” with senior ABC executives over the weekend, a source with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity said.

Australian News Channel, the company currently trading as Sky News Australia has tried and failed to trademark the term “News24” several times over the past two decades, IP Australia records show.

There is no current application by the company to trademark its new name, which intellectual property barrister Jane Rawlings said would be difficult because it uses generic terms and is similar to the ABC’s mark.

“Representing yourself as News24 where the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for many years has put up News 24, it’s likely to be a problem for them,” said Rawlings, a barrister and senior lecturer in trademark and copyright law at the University of Technology Sydney.

Rawlings said that any existing trademark owner could oppose a new mark, whether it is officially lodged with IP Australia or not, because of its potential to cause confusion with the public.

“News 24 is certainly something that the ABC has used in the past… [and] because of that reputation, the new mark might cause deception or confusion in the public,” Rawlings said.

Rawlings said the use of descriptive terms like ‘news’ and ’24’ give some grounds for flexibility, but issues such as logos could cause further complications.

The ABC and Sky have competed directly as the two 24-hour news channels in Australia since the launch of ABC News 24 in 2010.

The ABC declined to comment. Sky did not respond a request for comment.

Sky’s new name is also very similar to News24, South Africa’s largest subscription-led news website which has more than seven million Facebook followers, 6.5 million X followers and one million YouTube subscribers.

Its logo shares the same three colours, blue, red and white, and in the same colour progression, despite the word colour being inverted. It also uses the domain news24.com, which is similar to Sky’s newly listed news24.com.au.

The South African company was approached for comment.

Sky News Australia boss Paul Whittaker signalled the company’s intentions to continue growing its international digital footprint on Friday.

A Google search of News24 also shows the South African broadcaster as the first result. There is also a 24-hour Hindi news channel located in India trading as News24, which has 27 million subscribers on YouTube, as well as News24 Nepal, which has almost four million subscribers.

The use of generic terms in Sky’s new name could also pose difficulty in trademarking the terms themselves, which it appears the News Corp company is yet to do.

“I presume they will apply for trademark protection for that and that’s where other objectors to the use of News24 may well surface,” Rawlings said. “Certainly, if I were running a news service like that, I’d be keeping a very close eye on the trademark registers.”

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