A British clothing retailer has come under fire for trademarking the name of the west African Yoruba people several years ago, igniting a debate online about whether trademarking names of ethnic groups amounts to cultural appropriation.
Timbuktu, an outdoor clothing brand based in northern England, filed to trademark the word “Yoruba” in 2015, records from the UK’s Intellectual Property Office show.
But the registration sparked anger on Sunday when the owner of CultureTree, an African cultural center in London, wrote that she had attempted to trademark “Yoruba Stars” and claimed she faced a challenge from Timbuktu due to its similarity to the phrase the company had registered. In the United Kingdom, a proposed trademark can be challenged if it conflicts or bears similarity to one that was previously approved.
The Yoruba people form one of the largest ethnic groups in western Africa, and make up around a sixth of Nigeria’s population.
“I thought it was really strange that a company would be allowed to trademark the word ‘Yoruba’, a tribe and language of millions of people,” CultureTree founder Gbemisola Isimi wrote, adding that Timbuktu had opposed her attempts to register her own phrase. “I feel this is the height of cultural appropriation,” she wrote.
Isimi, whose center teaches young people to speak Yoruba, went on to accuse Timbuktu of “attempting to claim sole ownership of a birth right belonging to the people of another continent.”
