Fiji fights to trademark 'Bula'; time for India to think about Namaste?

A country can take only so much bula-ing. Considering its national greeting ‘Bula’ has been trademarked in the US no less than 42 times before, the spirited reaction of the Fijian government to the 43rd one by a chain of bars that also serve a version of its national drink kava, is not surprising.

Fiji has silently watched sundry stuffed toys, consultancies and other US businesses trademarking their word Bula — which means life or good health in the Fijian language — singly or in conjunction with other words there. But after the recent case of the Hawaiian word Aloha landing in a similar controversy, Fiji obviously could not let itself be bula-dozed any longer and will appeal to the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

If one US company tried to legally prevent another from using Aloha, it is not inconceivable that Fijians greeting each other also might be slapped with similar ‘cease and desist’ notices by litigious US trademark holders.


In 2016, Citigroup and AT&T locked horns over ‘Thank You’, which was actually allowed to be trademarked by the former. Luckily, both dropped their claims, but India should closely monitor the battle over the commercial, if not cultural, appropriation of Bula — ‘heritage hijacking’, as Fiji’s attorney general called it. Namaste, after all, has been trademarked far more often than Bula.