New travel magazine Wegbreek will apply for leave to appeal against this week’s judgment in the Cape High Court that it must change its name, publisher Naomi Herselman says.

Wegbreek is published by New Media Publishing, a subsidiary of the Naspers group.

Herselman said yesterday that management was considering the judgment and would discuss the implications of changing Wegbreek’s name.

Ramsay Son & Parker, publishers of 16-year-old travel magazine Getaway, applied for an interdict to stop New Media Publishing and Media 24 from infringing Getaway’s trademark or passing it off as being associated with Getaway.

In granting an order, Judge Abe Motala ruled that although Wegbreek was not a direct translation of Getaway, the average South African would understand it as a close translation. The name implied the same concept as Getaway and people could be misled into believing it to be the Afrikaans version of the English magazine.

He also ordered Wegbreek not to continue its Moegoe van die Maand column which was “a blatant copy” of Getaway’s column called Mug of the Month, remove all reference to Wegbreek from printed matter and material and to pay legal costs.

Wegbreek, which launched last April as a bimonthly, will be published monthly as of April after making significant strides in circulation. According to the June to September Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures, Wegbreek is selling an average of 58890 copies an issue and Herselman said last month that it had 13118 subscribers. Getaway’s audited ABC circulation figure in the same period is 92334 copies an issue.

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