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The logo is familiar - a pointed red roof sits atop solid black lettering proclaiming Phnom Penh's newest fast-food restaurant: "Pizza Hot".

Pizza Hot? Cambodia is full of such spelling mistakes - Sharaton Hotel is another example. Businesses clearly hope some of the prestige associated with big-name international brands such as Pizza Hut and Sheraton will rub off on their home-grown alternatives.

For Cambodian officials, the creative spelling is less than amusing. "This will definitely be a problem," said Nhoung Leap, head of the International Relations and Trademark Office at the Ministry of Commerce, shaking his head in despair over a picture of the two near-identical pizza logos. "The brand is the same and the wording is very similar."

The Cambodian government is well aware that trademark and copyright issues have fueled many an explosive trade dispute, most notably in recent years, between China and the United States - a country which is at this very moment considering whether to grant Cambodia Most Favored Nation trade status.

The country has drafted a law to deal with trademarks, but it is unlikely to be passed this year. "It is not exactly the top priority," said a lawyer with international law firm Dirksen Flipse Doran and Le. "It is much harder to operate without a companies law or a contract law." For now, the Commerce Ministry plods along registering about 100 foreign trademarks a month. From their point of view, the lack of a law is a minor irritant compared to their lack of a telephone, a fax machine or a functioning computer.

"We already have about 8,000 trademarks registered, you see," said Nhoung Leap, waving his hand at shaky towers of yellowing folders stacked on every available surface in his office. "If we need to check a previous registration we have to turn every page by hand. I feel like we are working at the bottom of a well."

To make matters worse, local brands are registered not in his office but by the Industry Ministry, and the scope for cross-checking is nil.

"You can't have two bureaucratic bodies doing the same job by different rules. It is a nightmare," said one legal advisor.

If equipment is lacking, so is expertise. Although Cambodia now boasts perhaps the most open market in Asia, years of civil war insulated it from much of the brand-name revolution that swept the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Civil servants reviewing applications for trademarks may not recognize similarities between a mark and a brand name long established elsewhere in the world, specialists said.

"You can't expect the Commerce Ministry to determine whether a mark is similar to another or not," said Claude Bisaillon, who advised on the drafting of Cambodia's trademark law. "If the application is correct, it will be registered. It is up to the owners of the (international) marks to defend themselves."

Commerce Ministry staff are the first to agree. "We are not lawyers," said Nhoung Leap. Faced with Gold Lion beer, which, in a blue can with gold lettering is clearly designed to resemble Cambodia's biggest selling imported beer, Tiger, the head of trademark registration shrugs. "To us a tiger is a tiger and a lion is a lion."

The courts may disagree. In law, once there is a law, the issue is whether a mark is similar enough to confuse the consumer. But trademarks are registered on a firstcome, first-served basis, and commercial lawyers are pessimistic about the prospects of overturning a local registration on the basis of a prior registration in another country. "You would have to be able to exert the kind of influence that the Ministry of Commerce understands," said one.

Executives at Cambodia Brewery are less than forthcoming about what they will do about the lion in Tiger's clothing.

"We are aware of the situation and are considering options to protect our mark," said Rick Link, general manager of the joint venture, which will soon start brewing Tiger in Cambodia.

In the case of Pizza Hot, the similarity between brands extends even to the little R in a circle, a symbol that indicates - erroneously in this case - that the name is a registered trademark.

Pizza Hut Thailand, which has been licensed by US-based Pizza Hut International to use the brand name in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, said it expected to do something to stop the name being usurped in Cambodia, but it doesn't know what. Under its agreement with Pizza Hut International, it must open at least one restaurant in each of those countries over the next three years.

Lawyers believe multinationals should do less whingeing and more registering. "International business can't have it both ways. You are against state intervention? You want free markets? Fine, then you have to take responsibility for protecting your own interests, watching out for your own business," said Bisaillon.

Copyright 1996 Asia Times.

(c) 1996 Chamber World Network International Ltd.