Rafting name ruled generic

A black water rafting company has lost its fight for a valuable marketing tool.

A long legal battle over use of the term "black water rafting" hit the wall in Hamilton's High Court last month.

Justice Tony Randerson declared the term - which describes floating through caves on an inner tube - generic and unable to be owned by one company.

The judgment, after a four-day hearing in March, followed a two-year legal battle between Waitomo operators Black Water Rafting and Waitomo Adventures.

It cost each of them more than $100,000.

Waitomo Adventures director Nick Andreef said he was pleased to see common sense prevail.

"This judgment was possible because of solid support from industry participants throughout the country," he said.

"Now that there is a clear generic term the industry is freed to get on with the job of growing the market."

Black Water Rafting director Peter Chandler said that while he was disappointed, it was important to put things into perspective and move on.

"What started as a successful joke - the water is not black and inner tubes are not rafts - turned into a serious business and appears to have become a part of New Zealand's kiwiana."

The court was told that black water rafting was started by Chandler at Waitomo in 1984. The following year, he entered into a partnership with John Ash and in 1993 the pair incorporated a company called Black Water Rafting.

Three years later, they filed an application to register the name black water rafting as a trademark. The application was granted in 1998.

The company now guides more than 25,000 people underground every year in groups of 12.

Its competitor, Waitomo Adventures, offered its version of black water rafting from 1997 using inner tubes as flotation devices in caves.

Other operators were offering similar services before then at Waitomo and in the South Island. None of them was able to use the term black water rafting.

They promoted the activity as cave tubing or cave rafting.

In October 2000, Waitomo Adventures started proceedings to have the trademark taken off the register.

The company argued that black water rafting had become a generic term in the public's mind.

- NZPA