By Stephen Mayne


Amateur Crikey never bothered to register a trade mark or a patent
for
our
now
very well known Australian internet brand, so it was amusing
to
read
Janine
Perrett’s piece in The Age’s business sectiontoday on the legal skirmish between Steve Irwin and
a
Swiss-born
Australian
entrepreneur Vernon Stuber who has just launched
“The
Crikey” – an
Australian
chocolate bar.

For all his folksy charm, Irwin is a voraciously commercial beast,
so
he
fired
off a legal threat as Perrett explains:

When Stuber registered the “Crikey” name for his new peanut
chocolate
bar,
he
found crocodile hunter Steve Irwin had endorsed a
Crikey
confectionary.
But
after a few legal letters about infringement issues,
it was
the feisty
croc
tamer who backed off.

Has anyone heard of the Irwin endorsed Crikey confectionary?

The croc man clearly doesn’t mind firing off legal threats as
he
also
persuaded
the owner of www.crikey.com, “Martin Hallier” to put a disclaimer on his site, which reads
“This
site
is
not affiliated with Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, or
Australia
Zoo
in
any way.”

Hallier’s site has a big picture of Irwin and talks
about
“tourism”
and
“Australia”, but he also had us in mind when he paid
US$7,500 to
a
Microsoft
employee for the domain in 2002. Hallier claims his
address is
the
fictional
“45 Main St, Burwood”. Funny that. My name is Stephen
Mayne and I
ran
in the
1999 Burwood by-election when Jeff Kennett quit
Parliament.

Hallier claims he’s had a bid lodged at US$22,500 for the past
two
years
but
is asking for US$45,000. It will be interesting to see
whether
Irwin,
Stuber or the
new Crikey owners ever have a serious crack at
getting
control of
the site.