Entrepreneur and advocate for Australia’s food manufacturing industry, Dick Smith, has lost the name rights to his OzEmite spread, with Intellectual Property Australia ruling the product is to be pulled from retailers’ shelves.

According to SmartCompany, IP Australia ruled OzEmite sounds too similar to another yeast spread, AussieMite – the founder of which, Rodger Ramsay, commenced legal proceedings in 2011.

The OzEmite trademark was registered in 1999, approved until 2003 and the product launched years later in 2012. The AussieMite trademark was registered in 2001 and approved in 2006. However, the owner of a trademark must use it within five years, or a third party is able to have it removed from the register, which Ramsay was in the process of doing when Dick Smith officially launched OzEmite.

Principal trademark lawyer with Callinans, John Carroll, told SmartCompany “There is a small caveat in the legislation that you can plead special circumstances and explain why the trademark hasn’t been used, but Dick Smith assumedly never ran such an argument.

“It’s simply a case where one trademark owner didn’t meet the requirements to show the trademark had been in use, while the other did," he said.

Funds from OzEmite sales have gone to charity, and despite claiming in December last year that the legal battle with AussieMite could be “a catastrophe for us and for Dick Smith Foods”, Smith refused to fight.

"We’re not even going to appear,’’ Smith said at the time. ‘‘This is ridiculous. We’re doing this for charity.''

He added that if he was to lose the naming rights, he could re-launch the product under a name he registered in October 2011 – Dinky Di-Nemite

