New Zealand’s Intellectual Property Office is asked to make precedent-setting ruling on whether long vowel uniquely distinguishes Māori words in multimillion trademark dispute.
ANALYSIS: What’s in a name? What’s in one letter in a name? And to be precise, what’s in a small horizontal line atop that letter?
More than $600 million, is what.
The Intellectual Property Office is working with lawyers for New Zealand and Australian honey makers to set a new date for a trademark hearing, once New Zealand comes out of lockdown.
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As Newsroom reported last week, a panel will hear an Australian challenge to attempts by this country’s producers, iwi and government to legally protect the name “manuka honey”.
Look carefully: that’s “manuka honey”, not “mānuka honey”.
READ MORE:
* Part 1: Lockdown protracts fight to protect mānuka honey as Kiwi
* Part 2: Mānuka honey dispute: What’s in a macron?
This is a material distinction because, according to a spokesperson, the Intellectual Property Office has never previously made a ruling on the macron.
The application to trademark manuka honey dates back to 2015, before macrons were in such widespread use to signify a long vowel in spoken Māori – and before the publication of the latest Intellectual Property Offices practice guidelines on Māori trade marks.
Those guidelines say Intellectual Property Office examiners will assess all trademark applications they receive, to determine whether they contain a Māori sign, or are derived from a Māori sign.
Where a Māori sign is identified, the Intellectual Property Office will add the trade mark type descriptor “Māori”, they continue. Long vowels are signalled by either repeating the vowel (the Tainui practice) or by placing a macron above the vowel.
The argument that "manuka" is a generic term is made by the Australian Manuka Honey Association and in particular two New Zealand Māori members.
"The Australian Manuka Honey Association has never had an issue with Maori ownership of 'Maanuka' and 'Mānuka'," he told Newsroom. "In fact there have been several suggestions that the Association and the Māori interests could look at partnerships."
– Tom Walters, Australian Manuka Honey Association
Tom Walters, from Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa and Ngāti Rangi, is the sole owner, director and chief executive of a Taupō-based company named the Māori Research Institute, a shareholder in a honey export company, and says he is in the process of developing a trans-Tasman science coalition to progress their honey product together.
Harvey Bell, from Ngāti Ruaka and Ngāti Rangi, is chairman of the Waipakuranui Māori land incorporation near Whanganui.
They have both accepted directorships on the Australian industry association, which characterises the trademark challenge as a "David versus Goliath battle for survival".
READ MORE: Lockdown protracts fight to protect mānuka honey as Kiwi
As with rugby and the invention of iconic summer desserts, New Zealand is the behemoth in this battle. New Zealand's mānuka honey exports dwarf Australia's so-called manuka honey. It comes as the tonnage of honey exports grows year by year – but the price per kilo of lower-value non-mānuka honey declines.
That's why is it so critical to the Australians to be allowed to brand their honey as manuka, to grow their international market.
New Zealand's Ministry of Primary Industries figures show honey export prices have dropped over the past couple of years, to an average NZ$40.01/kg in the year to March 2021.
That drop is due to the falling price of non-mānuka honey, down to just $19.23/kg. Monofloral mānuka honey, by contrast, is now an average $53.13/kg.
Walters argued there was a rift between Māori interests in the honey; Walters and Bell in one camp, New Zealand's Mānuka Charitable Trust in the other. When he and Bell were unsuccessful in persuading the Federation of Māori Authorities to seek protection for mānuka or maanuka honey, they threw in their lot with the Australians.
"The Australian Manuka Honey Association has never had an issue with Maori ownership of 'Maanuka' and 'Mānuka'," he told Newsroom.
"In fact there have been several suggestions that the Association and the Māori interests could look at partnerships. Maybe even Manuka forestation in Australia?"
"This submission comments on the use of the Māori word ‘mānuka’. It seeks consistent use in line with best practice. This correct spelling is ‘mānuka’. The word ‘manuka’ has no meaning."
– Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori
But he said the word manuka, without a macron, was as much Australian and it was New Zealand; Australian beekeepers claim the name "manuka" has been used in Tasmania since the 1870s to describe the scraggly Leptospermum scoparium bush that has grown for many hundreds of years in both New Zealand and Australia. And they have records of so-called "manuka honey" dating back to 1884.
And they are claiming support from an unexpected quarter: Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission. They rely upon a written submission made to a Parliamentary committee inquiry in 2017, in which the commission discounted the use of "manuka", without a macron, as having any meaning in Māori.
"This submission comments on the use of the Māori word ‘mānuka’," Te Taura Whiri says. "It seeks consistent use in line with best practice. This correct spelling is ‘mānuka’. The word ‘manuka’ has no meaning."
"Try spelling Cōca-Cola with a macron over the 'o' – I'll give you seconds before you get injuncted. Try trading as 'Hārrods' with a macron; I give you minutes."
– John Rawcliffe, UMF Honey Association
For more than 100 years, mānuka honey was regarded as inferior to clover honeys. The value of the honey made from pollen collected from the bush is a newer development. Mānuka honey's anti-bacterial powers have become known to commercial producers only in the past 40 years, since Waikato University's Dr Peter Molan and Kerry Simpson discovered its unusual therapeutic properties.
Their research demonstrated antibacterial, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory qualities, causing the value of the honey to soar. Now, a 230g jar of good 1900+ MGO New Zealand mānuka honey sells for £2595 (NZ$5170) at Harrods of London.
New Zealand honey exports were valued at more than $500 million last year. As it's grown more lucrative, it has been more bitterly contested.
This year, Tasmanian beekeepers Robbie and Nicola Charles, from Blue Hills Honey, applied for a trademark on their Tasmanian Blue Hills Honey; the Manuka Honey Appellation Society appealed the ruling.
That's dragged in the two countries' beekeeping associatiions.
On Friday, Australian Honey Bee Industry Council chief executive Helen Goodall wrote to Karin Kos, her counterpart at Apiculture NZ, protesting the New Zealand society's legal action, and warning that it compromised the ongoing relationship between the two industries. "The actions of MHAS now targets the livelihood of individual beekeepers in Australia which impacts the whole of the Australian honey bee industry," she wrote.
“There are some similarities to when wine producers everywhere started branding their sparkling wines as champagne, until the French took ownership. Now anything labelled champagne must be from that region. For us it runs even deeper because mānuka is our taonga and our reo.”
– Pita Tipene, Mānuka Charitable Trust
New Zealand applicants expressed complete confidence that manuka/mānuka was a Māori word, regardless of any macron or double vowel.
"Manuka is a Māori word – end of story," said John Rawcliffe, managing director of the UMF Honey industry association. "Try spelling Cōca-Cola with a macron over the 'o' – I'll give you seconds before you get injuncted. Try trading as 'Hārrods' with a macron; I give you minutes."
Tests on so-called mānuka honey sold in the US and the UK have regularly shown other honeys blended into it, often by producers in Asia and eastern Europe. Cracking down on those has become a frustrating game of whack-a-mole for New Zealand trade agencies and big New Zealand mānuka honey producers like Comvita.
So in 2015, the UMF Honey Association run by export lobbyist John Rawcliffe first applied to trademark the name of the honey. That application was transferred to the Manuka Honey Appellation Society Inc. And after initiially being rebuffed, the Intellectual Property Office accepted it in 2018. "The application and its regulations (that govern the use of the certification mark) were rigorously examined by Intellectual Property Office NZ Trade Mark Examiners prior to its acceptance," said Steffen Gazley, the hearings manager.
Certification trademarks are also being sought in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, United States, Europe and China. They differ from normal trademarks in being available to all qualifying producer, subject to the rules, and not just to the trade mark owner. The intent is for the manuka honey certification trademark to be available to all producers of genuine honey produced in New Zealand on a non-discriminatory basis.
Though the filing is still under the name of the Manuka Honey Appellation Society, the trademark application is now being run by a newly-established Māori grouping, the Mānuka Charitable Trust, in partnership with the honey producers of the UMH Honey Association, and government agencies. The Government has bankrolled the legal applications with a $1.7m loan.
Trust chair Pita Tipene declined to comment on the macron challenge, ahead of the hearing. “There are some similarities to when wine producers everywhere started branding their sparkling wines as champagne, until the French took ownership. Now anything labelled champagne must be from that region," he said. "For us it runs even deeper because mānuka is our taonga and our reo.”
That illustrates the significant of the industry to New Zealand export earning.
"Given the growth in export volumes of mānuka honey, and the continued high price this product attracts overseas, we can expect to see further growth in New Zealand honey exports."
– BERL
A BERL economic report says China was the biggest market for New Zealand mānuka honey, with buying $85.8m in exports last year – doubled what they were in the year to June 2019. The USA was the second-largest market, followed by Japan, the UK and Australia. New Zealand sold $32m in mānuka honey to Australia, which would be especially aggravating for Australian producers.
But unlike the four bigger markets, exports to Australia had declined from the $49m that country purchased in the year to June 2019. "Potentially this decline was due to the growth in other export markets where New Zealand mānuka honey has been able to attract higher prices," BERL says.
"Given the growth in export volumes of mānuka honey, and the continued high price this product attracts overseas, we can expect to see further growth in New Zealand honey exports."
It notes the increased numbers of registered hives and beekeepers: 854,477 hives were registered in New Zealand, up 70 percent on 2014. And in the same five year period, the Ministry of Primary Industry reports the number of registered beekeepers has doubled to 9,510. BERL argues that more beekeepers are "chasing the high prices" of both monofloral and multifloral mānuka honey.
The Australia Manuka Honey Association wants a share of that lucrative market. "We have never used manuka with a macron and we completely respect the use of it in New Zealand," said chairman Paul Callander. "We have been calling our Australian manuka as the honey from the plant by the name since 1930s.
"As you are aware from the information supplied to you, the word manuka as we spell it has no meaning in the Maori language, as confirmed by the Maori Language Commission.
"We simply want to continue doing what we have been doing and calling it by our name. It is interesting and completely hypocritical that New Zealand's largest honey company has a joint venture in Australia with our largest honey company Capilano to grow manuka in Australia, and yet supports the position of the Manuka Honey Appellation Society that it only belongs to New Zealand."
