Tanzania: new article on trade mark confusion test

A new article by Alex B Makulilo (advocate of the High Court of Tanzania, lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania and PhD candidate, University of Bremen) has just been published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP): it's "Likelihood of confusion: what is the yardstick? Trade mark jurisprudence in Tanzania". At present the article is only available to subscribers to the journal's online service and to anyone who wishes to pay for limited access -- but those who subscribe to the printed version will be getting their copy in the not-too-distant future.

Since JIPLP's publisher, Oxford University Press, has charitable status, one of its objectives is to make JIPLP available to educational institutions in developing countries (see Afro-IP post here). This means that Alex's article will be accessible to readers in Africa more readily than if it had been published in a regular commercial law journal.

What is the article about? According to the abstract:

"The most frequent issue which arises in any case of trade mark infringement is whether a commercial use of a particular trade mark is likely to confuse consumers. 

In this article, the author examines case law on trade mark infringement developed by the High Court of Tanzania and argues that this case law currently falls short of providing prescriptory guidance in terms of ambit and criteria for determining likelihood of confusion".