Chiefs

Welcome back to Pacific Beat.

Now, the chief executive of the Chiefs super rugby team in New Zealand fears that three decades of brand building will be undone if the PNG Chiefs NRL side are allowed to keep the same name.

Simon Grafhouse says he's surprised the new franchise is planning to go public with its logo and colours next month when the club's identity is still at the centre of a legal battle.

That battle has already dragged on for more than a year.

And, you know, the best time to do that is before any damage is done.

So hopefully we can get around a table and actually come up with a solution before the brand launch, because once that happens, that will potentially cause confusion in the market, which IP Australia has identified.

It's obvious, I guess, as to why you, as a rugby union franchise, would have concerns about a rugby league franchise also carrying the name of Chiefs.

But you're not the only ones.

I think that it's gonna just very quickly prove impracticable to try and introduce such a constitution prior to the next election and to push it through parliament.

The PNG Chiefs logo launch is set for next month, but the team is still facing an uphill battle for the rights to their team name.

But to continue and to try and push this and think that, oh, well, we'll just keep going no matter what, is so risky, and I don't know why they would do that.

And later, the eruption of the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption may just hold the key to slowing down the effects of climate change.

[wind blowing] Vinaka vaka levu.

Welcome back to Pacific Beat.

Uh, the next stage of the PNG Chiefs journey to the NRL is just a month away, with the launch of the club's colors and logo due to take place on October 21st.

But right now, the franchise still doesn't own the intellectual property rights to the team's identity.

Then tomorrow we go to a local club match on the West Coast.

And Greg Smith's taking us along, former, I think he played for the Chiefs for a while, Greg Smith at Fiji and Hooker.

He's going to take us to a local club game, which I'm looking forward to.

Fiji play Japan tomorrow night at 10 o'clock too in the Pacific Nations final.

All right, next one, yours please.

Fuck that.

Is the PNG Chiefs

good for the Waikato Chiefs? I think so.

because we've seen so many things online now it's like people are scared and scared and fearful to try and be the hero you know because they feel like they might do something worse oh yeah but yeah just the opening statement now that you shared and then reading like just a brief read of it it's almost like man it's like people are i say caught up in the metaverse that you know it's like oh it's not real or someone else will sort it someone else will sort it you know what i mean

A lot of people say, oh, what about the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL? Why don't they sue them? Well, if you read the trademark laws, it says that it's because it's totally two different sports, right? And the gears are totally not the same.

Like, you're not going to go in and buy a Kansas City Chiefs football NFL jersey.

jersey when you're a rugby league fan or a rugby union fan because you know what the difference is right so so you know it depends not a big fan of using

like that kind of our language for for you know smoking drinking gambling anything like that um i think that it should be kept separate but um Yeah, apart from that, man, yeah, it's just a company trying to promote their label.

know I see you boys What topic article did you have for us?

Yeah, so I saw this in the news and then I saw the article afterwards, but it's about NZR.

So New Zealand Rugby, I mean, New Zealand Rugby, obviously they own rights to Super Rugby And they own all the franchises, all the New Zealand Super Rugby franchises, including the Chiefs, right? We know the Chiefs If you're from Hamilton, from the Waikato area, you're a Chiefs fan, if you're a Rugby fan Chiefs two-time champions back in the day Team that sold away Mills from the Blues chiefs who colors are what red red yellow and black well they've put in like I don't think I think they've made it official but there's talks that they would put in a legal claim or sue or action against the P&G chiefs who are the NRL's newest expansion team due to come out Was it next year or the year after? Year after So they're claiming copyright infringement to the P&G Chiefs who obviously have the same name Chiefs but also have the same colors too So I don't know if it's like a thing of, you know, the NRL is making noise, making noise.

He's buyer beware.

I reckon he's going to go to P&G Chiefs, collect the money.

and just drop the biggest loads of Amber Heard you've ever seen on the field in history.

No, he is there for the brothers.

Now, can I just – I'm just going to – look, we do go to New Zealand, so I might give a little bit of pushback here.

And I know a lot of Kiwis listen to this show.

The Chiefs versus the Chiefs.

Rugby codes locked in bitter trademark fight.

And I said yesterday to Daniel, the Hurricanes proved how to smash established All Blacks.

And none of them looked good coming up against the Hurricanes' fallback, especially the numerous Chiefs' All Black forwards.

They got pummeled.

So the writing was on the wall that if South Africa bought the game that we all know they're going to break, We might struggle to contain them, and we didn't contain them.

And also, they read the game.

He came down.

He came to Waikato a couple of years ago after he played for Chiefs.

He came to play for us a couple of years.