Willis Raburu Plans to Share Trade-Marked 'Bazu' With Multi-Million Company

 In a hurry? Here’s a quick summary…

• Media personality Willis Raburu will share the trademark "Bazu" with L'Oréal East Africa Limited, as L'Oréal filed a successful application to use the term in a different product class.

• Raburu's trademark is registered for advertising and telecommunication services, allowing L'Oréal to use "Bazu" in other categories, despite Raburu's initial registration.

Media personality Willis Raburu will now share the trademark "Bazu" with cosmetics manufacturing company L'Oréal East Africa Limited. 

This development follows L'Oréal's trademark application filed in February 2023. Raburu, who initially registered the trademark on April 13, 2021, under No. 116744, popularized the term "Bazu" during his tenure as host of the '10/10' show on Citizen TV. 

Colloquially, 'Bazu' refers to a wealthy individual, a person of great influence, or someone of high social standing.

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L'Oréal East Africa Limited, known for its Nice and Lovely products, applied to use the term 'Bazu' for their products, resulting in both parties sharing the trademark. 

Under the Trade Marks Act, Cap 506 of the Laws of Kenya, trademarks can be registered under 45 different classes, each representing a distinct category of goods or services. 

Raburu's trademark is registered under the International Classification of Goods and Services for advertising and telecommunication services. 

This classification restricts his protection to this specific category, allowing other entities, like L'Oréal, to register the same trademark under different classes without contest.

To prevent such occurrences, a trademark must be registered across all relevant classes, thereby limiting its use exclusively to the registrant. 

Raburu recently experienced a legal victory in March 2024 when a telecommunications company was ordered to pay him Sh6.5 million for using the 'Bazu' trademark to promote one of its data bundle products. 

He successfully argued that his trademark registration granted him exclusive rights to the use of 'Bazu' within the realm of advertising and telecommunications services.

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A trademark distinguishes the goods or services of one industrial or commercial enterprise from those of others and can consist of distinctive words, letters, numbers, drawings, pictures, monograms, signatures, colors, or combinations of these elements. 

The Trade Marks Act (Cap 506) Sec 2 describes a mark as a distinguishing guise, slogan, device, brand, heading, label, ticket, name, signature, word, letter, numeral, or any combination thereof, whether in two-dimensional or three-dimensional form.