New Global Mānuka Trademark Campaign Launched in Seven Markets

The Mānuka Charitable Trust (MCT) has filed wild-card mānuka honey trademark applications in New Zealand, Australia, China, Europe, Singapore, United Kingdom, and United States. Bruce Roscoe has reviewed the filings and draft regulations for the three proposed marks. He concludes that it is unclear whether MCT has embarked on a course of honey industry partnership or separatism. Whichever prevails, a share of the cost of the likely years-long relitigation will be drawn from the kitty from which beekeepers are paid.

The certification trademark image applied for by the Mānuka Charitable Trust in key honey markets around the world, sometimes with a macron and sometimes without. It’s the latest in years-long struggles to protect mānuka honey by the industry and government.

MCT has breathed new life into the trademark quest, proposing not a word mark but an arresting, beguiling, and intelligent tohu design accompanied by only the word "mānuka".

The tohu is intelligent because it knows that to include the words "Aotearoa New Zealand" or "Aotearoa" would imply acknowledgement of mānuka honey production offshore. The design itself speaks to provenance without making that self-defeating concession.

The MCT trademark application filings in China and US were made on 11 December 2024; in Australia and UK on 5 December 2024; and in Europe, New Zealand, and Singapore on 11 June 2024. There are three marks － the tohu alone and the tohu followed by "mānuka" written with and without a macron. Use of one or two of the marks depends on the country of filing. All applications were for the "certification" trademark type except in China where a standard type of trademark is sought. If the failed MCT application for the word mark "mānuka honey" filed in Australia on 4 October 2022 is counted, four trademarks have been proposed.

A certification trademark (CTM) is administered by an independent certification body that permissions use of the mark according to a set of regulations. MCT proposes itself as that body. A draft of the regulations accompanies an application for the mark. CTMs sit at the midpoint of a standard trademark and a "geographical indication" or "GI". Registration of a standard trademark can be achieved in a number of weeks, a CTM in months or even years, and a GI in decades. Owing to the potentially enormous commercial value such marks can bestow, applications can meet equally enormous opposition. MCT's endgame is winning GIs for mānuka honey.

In common with the UMF™ trademark, the proposed CTMs could be applied to mānuka honey and products containing mānuka honey, but in a departure from UMFHA practice could also be applied to mānuka oil. A larger difference is that the CTM could be used equally on "multifloral" and "monofloral" manuka products.  

Premature Last Rites

Researchers could be forgiven for believing that last rites had been administered to the mānuka honey trademark effort on 22 May 2023. On that day, the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) released a 171-page ruling that sided with Australian opposition to New Zealand's audacious and troubled campaign that had spanned nearly eight years since the UMF Honey Association (UMFHA) had filed the first trademark application with IPONZ on 18 August 2015.

Audacious because the trademark was a "word mark" that comprised only the words "manuka honey", and troubled because the final rejection was preceded by an earlier rejection (4 September 2015), a notice of intention to reject (8 June 2017), and opposing filings not just by the Australian Manuka Honey Association but also by Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.

A colour version of the CTM mark, as designed by renowned tā moko artist Sir Derek Lardelli, and in use by Mānuka Charitable Trust.

Treaty of Waitangi Protocol

UMFHA transferred the initial filing to the Manuka Honey Appellation Society (MHAS), a separate but mirror identity, for regulatory reasons. MCT, created by fiat of the Ministry for Primary Industries (9 August 2019) in consideration of Treaty of Waitangi partnership protocol and registered by Ngāi Tahu (12 February 2020), has assumed the roles of trademark administrator and certifier that were intended for MHAS.

"Many people were willing to lay down their pens and their tools but we said 'no, no, we need to continue this (trademark effort)'", Te Pitau Ltd (MCT's operating arm) chair Kristen Kohere-Soutar told the trust's six-monthly update hui via zoom on 17 March. “We have (also) become responsible for the authentication of mānuka. By that we mean a series of science projects which speak to the distinctiveness of mānuka".

Mānuka honey labels seem more cluttered than ever with "certification" marks, as though betraying a loss of confidence in the power of mānuka honey itself.  Examples are "Certified B Corporation", "Glyphosate Free", and "Non-GMO Project Verified", to which we can add various catchphrases worked into emblems that give the false impression of distinct "certification". Also, many if not most UMF™ labels show both UMF™ and MGO values. Will UMF™ and MCT trademarks share the front of labels or will one mark be chosen over the other?  

Levy Comparison

MCT proposes to charge levies for trademark use. A comparison of these amounts and actual levies charged by UMFHA is set out in the table accompanying this article.

A substantial saving could be made by use of only the MCT mark. Moreover, the sanctioning of "multifloral" mānuka honey in the MCT regime will appeal to major UMF licensees, such as 100% Pure New Zealand Honey and Egmont Honey, which have argued vigorously for the UMF rating system to accommodate the "multifloral" category.

Disappointingly, the MCT draft regulations in large part are a restatement of those first conceived by UMFHA. The identical wording "produced in New Zealand" (as opposed to bottled or jarred in New Zealand) greenlights bulk exports. It is difficult to see how this concession can be consistent with acting as a kaitiaki or guardian of the taonga or treasure of mānuka. Blanche Morrogh, a director of Te Pitau Ltd, assured the 17 March hui that bulk mānuka exports would be conditional on offshore packers meeting the same MCT standards required of New Zealand packers.

A Partnership of Two Creations  

The Apiarist's Advocate editor and this writer were excluded from the publicly advertised 21 February MCT hui held to discuss views about the proposed new honey industry body. Our exclusion flew in the face of MCT's first "core principle", which the trust promotes on its website as "Te Kotahitanga － inclusivity, taking everyone with us as an expression of, and commitment to, the public good".

MCT also employs language redolent of separatism. The trust states its second core principle as "Kaitiakitanga － stewardship, protection in perpetuity (by Māori/iwi) derived from a genealogical paradigm". 

Lynell Huria, a longstanding director and "legal chair" of Te Pitau, speaks of "by Maori for Maori" in her self-introduction video posted to a website linked to that of Kāhui Legal, her employer. Kāhui Legal is a Treaty of Waitangi claims specialist which replaced Buddle Finlay as lead law firm for the mānuka trademark cases in November 2022.

Partnership stands on firmer ground. As New Zealand's native species of bee are solitary, non-social creatures that do not produce honeycomb, no claim can be laid to a pre-colonial honey story. "Mīere" and "honi" in Te Reo Māori are loanwords from the French "miel" and English "honey". The production of honey is traced to the 1840s after the introduction of hives by Mary Bumby, a British missionary, in Northland in 1839. The bee strain introduced was Apis mellifera.

The genesis of honey production in Aotearoa New Zealand is a partnership of two creations － the European honeybee and the indigenous mānuka flower.