New Zealand honey producers spent eight years and lost a real, formal legal battle trying to trademark the words “Manuka Honey” for their exclusive use — and in 2023, New Zealand’s own Intellectual Property Office ruled against them, in favor of Australian producers who also grow the same plant. It’s a genuine, documented trademark dispute with named parties, a named ruling, and a real financial cost order — not folklore or marketing spin.
Key Takeaways
- In 2015, the Mānuka Honey Appellation Society (representing New Zealand producers) filed to register “Manuka Honey” as a certification trademark with New Zealand’s Intellectual Property Office (IPONZ).
- The Australian Manuka Honey Association formally opposed the application, arguing the term is simply descriptive of honey made from the Leptospermum plant genus, which grows naturally in both New Zealand and Australia — not something New Zealand alone could own.
- IPONZ ruled against the New Zealand group in May 2023, finding they had “fallen short of establishing the necessary distinctiveness, both inherent and acquired” required to trademark the term.
- The ruling explicitly acknowledged mānuka’s status as taonga (a treasure) in Māori culture, with real cultural knowledge (mātauranga Māori) attached to the plant — but noted New Zealand’s Trade Marks Act doesn’t require that cultural significance to be weighed in a trademark distinctiveness ruling.
- IPONZ ordered the New Zealand group to pay the Australian association NZ$6,430 in costs — a real, enforceable outcome, not a symbolic result.
Table of Contents
- Why New Zealand Wanted an Exclusive Trademark
- The Case: 2015 to 2023
- What IPONZ Actually Ruled
- The Māori Cultural Dimension
- Why This Is a Different Kind of Fight Than “Champagne”
- Why This Actually Matters for Buyers
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why New Zealand Wanted an Exclusive Trademark
Manuka honey commands a significant price premium over most other honey varieties, driven largely by its distinctive antibacterial properties and New Zealand’s decades of marketing built around the plant’s specifically Kiwi identity. The trouble for that positioning is a straightforward biological fact: the manuka plant, Leptospermum scoparium, isn’t unique to New Zealand — related Leptospermum species grow naturally across Australia as well, and Australian beekeepers have produced and sold honey from those plants, often under the same “manuka” name, for just as long. If New Zealand producers could legally lock down “Manuka Honey” as a trademark applying only to their own product, Australian producers using the same common name for a genuinely comparable product would face a real legal problem selling into markets that recognize the trademark.
The Case: 2015 to 2023
The dispute wasn’t quick or informal. In 2015, the Mānuka Honey Appellation Society (MHAS), representing New Zealand honey producers, filed an application with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) to register “Manuka Honey” as a certification trademark — a designation that, if granted, would have restricted use of the term to products meeting the society’s own certification standard, effectively excluding Australian-produced manuka honey from using the name in markets recognizing the mark. The Australian Manuka Honey Association (AMHA) formally opposed the application, and the resulting proceeding stretched on for roughly eight years, described by trademark commentators as one of the most complex and longest-running cases to come before IPONZ.
What IPONZ Actually Ruled
IPONZ issued its decision in May 2023, upholding the Australian association’s opposition and rejecting the New Zealand group’s trademark application. Assistant Commissioner Natasha Alley’s ruling found that MHAS “fallen short of establishing the necessary distinctiveness, both inherent and acquired” needed to register the term as a certification mark — legal language for a straightforward underlying point: because both New Zealand and Australian producers had already used “manuka honey” as an ordinary descriptive term for years before 2015, the word couldn’t function as a trademark distinguishing one group’s product from another’s. The ruling included a pointed line rejecting the idea that Australian marketing success was somehow improper: “savvy marketing by Australian honey producers does not equate to dishonest trading on their part,” and that marketing success “does not justify registration of a purely descriptive word by MHAS as a certification mark in New Zealand.” IPONZ ordered MHAS to pay AMHA NZ$6,430 in costs.
The Māori Cultural Dimension
The ruling didn’t dismiss the cultural stakes lightly. IPONZ explicitly acknowledged that mānuka holds real status as taonga — a treasure — in Māori culture, carrying genuine mātauranga Māori (traditional knowledge) that predates any commercial honey industry entirely. Assistant Commissioner Alley reportedly expressed “considerable sympathy” for the New Zealand group’s position on the plant’s cultural significance. The legal outcome hinged on a separate, narrower point: New Zealand’s Trade Marks Act, as written, doesn’t require IPONZ to weigh cultural or indigenous significance when assessing whether a term meets the specific legal test for trademark distinctiveness. That’s a gap in the law’s structure, not a judgment that the cultural claim itself was invalid — a distinction the ruling itself seems to have gone out of its way to make clear.
Why This Is a Different Kind of Fight Than “Champagne”
It’s worth understanding why New Zealand’s approach here worked differently than the geographic-name protections most people associate with food and drink — Champagne, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Roquefort. Those protections exist under the European Union’s dedicated geographical indication (GI) system, a specific legal regime that reserves certain names for products genuinely tied to a defined region, separate from ordinary trademark law. New Zealand’s Mānuka Honey Appellation Society wasn’t operating under an equivalent GI framework — it applied through New Zealand’s standard Trade Marks Act, seeking a certification trademark, which carries a different and in some ways higher bar: the applicant has to show the term is actually distinctive (functioning to identify one specific source), not simply that it’s tied to a place. A term that’s already been used descriptively and widely by multiple producers before an application — exactly the situation with “manuka honey” and Australian beekeepers — is much harder to convert into an exclusive trademark than it would be to establish as a protected geographic indication under a purpose-built GI system, which explains part of why this case dragged on for eight years and ultimately failed on those specific legal grounds.
Why This Actually Matters for Buyers
The ruling doesn’t mean “manuka honey” stopped being a meaningful term — it means no single certifying body gets to legally decide who’s allowed to use it. In practice, this makes independent certification marks (like the UMF rating system, run by a separate licensing authority) more useful to a buyer than the word “manuka” alone ever was, since “manuka honey” itself remains a broad, descriptive term either country’s producers can legally use. A buyer genuinely trying to compare products is better served checking for a specific, verifiable certification number and country of origin on the label than trusting the word “manuka” by itself to signal a particular standard — a distinction this site’s own guide to Manuka honey’s UMF ratings covers in more depth from the buying side of the question.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did New Zealand lose the legal right to call honey “manuka”?
No — New Zealand producers can still use “manuka honey” freely. What they lost was the specific attempt to trademark the term exclusively for their own certification standard, which would have restricted Australian producers from using the same name for their own genuine Leptospermum-sourced honey.
Why did Australia oppose New Zealand’s trademark application?
Because the manuka plant genus, Leptospermum, grows naturally in Australia as well as New Zealand, and Australian beekeepers have produced honey from it and marketed it as “manuka honey” for years — the Australian Manuka Honey Association argued the term was simply descriptive, not something one country’s industry group could exclusively own.
What did IPONZ actually rule in 2023?
New Zealand’s Intellectual Property Office ruled that the Mānuka Honey Appellation Society had not established the “distinctiveness” legally required to register “Manuka Honey” as a certification trademark, and ordered the society to pay the Australian Manuka Honey Association NZ$6,430 in costs.
Did the ruling dismiss Māori cultural claims to manuka?
Not exactly. IPONZ acknowledged mānuka’s real cultural significance as taonga in Māori culture and expressed sympathy for that position, but ruled that New Zealand’s Trade Marks Act doesn’t require cultural significance to be considered in the specific legal test for trademark distinctiveness — a gap in the law itself, not a rejection of the cultural claim.
Does this affect how I should buy manuka honey?
It reinforces that the word “manuka” alone doesn’t guarantee a specific standard, since producers in both countries can legally use it. Checking for a specific, verifiable certification (like a UMF rating with a real license number) and a clear country of origin is a more reliable buying signal than the word “manuka” by itself.
How long did this legal dispute last?
About eight years — from the initial 2015 trademark application by the Mānuka Honey Appellation Society to the final IPONZ ruling in May 2023, described by trademark commentators as one of the longest and most complex proceedings the office has handled.
