Outstanding Cases - Hola Susana

Cover Crónica Newspaper

Monday, December 1, 1997.

Monday, December 1, 1997.

Monday, December 1, 1997.

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Monday, December 1, 1997.

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Hola Susana

In 1997, in the court action entitled "García y García, Ovidio A. v. Televisora Federal S.A. –Telefe in re discontinuance of use of trademarks and damages”, heard by the National Court of Appeals in Federal Civil and Commercial matters No. 3, court-file No. 2218/93 of October 28, TELEFE was sentenced to discontinue the use of the mark HOLA SUSANA and to pay 20 million US dollars in damages, interests and court costs.

S&BM was not involved in the court action. After the judgment passed by the Appellate Court, it developed a strategy to minimize or counteract its effects. It consisted in getting Ms. Susana Giménez herself directly involved in the dispute, by bringing a lawsuit against Garcia for the recovery of the mark, based on the fact that the title and trademark "Hola Susana" was due to and related with her and, thus, Telefé and Mr. Garcia were quarrelling over something that ultimately did not belong to either of them.

The strategy designed by Gustavo A. A. Sena was approved and, while it was being implemented, from the investigation and review of all the administrative and judicial proceedings done by another of S&BM partners, Alfredo M Sena, it was discovered that the trademarks that had been the basis for grounding the sentence in the court actions against Telefe had not been executed by Ovidio García, in fact, the signatures thereon were apocryphal. This detail made the trademarks null and void, which ended up in a scandal, followed by administrative and judicial filings, expert appraisals and arduous negotiations that concluded with an agreement. TELEFE preferred to enter into an agreement since the sale of its share capital was in process, and it was anyhow benefited because it was done with better conditions in substantially lower economic terms and different from the amounts that arose from the court sentences.

The detail of the apocryphal signatures, discovered years later, minimized the effects of two millionaire sentences.