(42)  Dolly, the Scottish Parliament and tartan trade marks

A food company, Flavour of Scotland, has launched a Scottish Parliament tartan with which it proposes to brand a range of products including shortbread, brown sauce, tinned haggis and whisky miniatures. The company also hopes that the tartan will be used in the furnishings of the Scottish Parliament itself. The tartan contains the colours of all the Scottish political parties. An application has also been made to register the name Scottish Parliament as a trade mark. It may be noted that the Scottish Parliament itself will have no legislative competence to deal with intellectual property rights. Meantime the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh has applied to register the name Dolly as a trade mark. Dolly is the name of a sheep created by the Institute, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Earlier Zanussi had advertised its washing machines and other appliances under an image of a sheep which was not Dolly but was labelled Dolly alongside a slogan The misappliance of science, playing on its well-known and long-established the appliance of science slogan. (See below, No 14, for the application to patent Dolly, or the process by which she was created.) (22 September 1998)