Protecting brands

Mischa Barton has done the creative celeb thing and is selling a range of handbags with her own brand.

All well and good, except that when she tried to register a trade mark in Australia for her name, her signature and her logo, she ran into an opposition from Australian company Mischa Accessories, which distributes handbags.

Likelihood of confusion between the two Mischas? In an interview, I asked Larry Emder, and he said he thinks he’d be confused! That’s good news for Mischa Accessories, but they’ll have to show that the rest of the market feels that way too.