Using a word first gives no exclusive claim to it, court finds
The High Court dismissed a challenge to the Electoral Commission's refusal to let a political party rebrand as "Freedom" before the 2026 election.
In NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party v Electoral Commission [2026] NZHC 2550, released on 25 August 2026, the court rejected the party's bid to overturn the Commission's decision to decline its application to change its registered name and logo.
The party applied on 1 July 2026 to rename itself "Freedom" and to register a matching logo. The Commission declined the application on 5 August 2026, finding that the name and logo were "likely to mislead or confuse electors on the ballot paper and in the campaign in general."
The court explained that the Electoral Act 1993 (the Act) required the Commission to refuse a name or logo it considered "likely to cause confusion or mislead electors." Once the Commission reached that view, it had no choice but to refuse, the court said.
The Commission compared "Freedom" with "Freedoms NZ," the short name of a party of which the applicant had earlier been part of until the Commission cancelled that party's registration on 1 May 2025 at its request. The court held that the short name was the right one to compare, because voters had seen it on the 2023 ballot paper.
The party argued that the Commission had misapplied the confusion test, pointing to a Court of Appeal trademark ruling. The court accepted that trademark cases offered some guidance but said that they arose in a different setting and did not bind the Commission. A trademark was a form of property, it noted, while the Act did not treat party names or logos as property and did not ask who owned a word.
On that basis, the court found that it did not matter which party used the word "freedom" first. The applicant had added it to its name in 2022, before the other party registered in 2023, but the court said that the only question was whether the Commission's view was reasonable. It held that the two parties' shared history, and the prominence of "freedom" in both names and logos, gave the Commission a reasonable basis for its decision, even though the other party was no longer registered.
The court accepted that the refusal limited the party's freedom of expression under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, but held that preventing voter confusion justified it. It dismissed the challenge and ordered the party to pay the Commission's costs.
