Taking the Mika

There's trouble brewing for Mika, as a Belgian reggae artist also called Mika has emerged, understandably miffed that her name has been pinched.

Victoria Newton, showing a surprisingly poor grip on trademark law, misses the point somewhat:

Reggae Mika has hardly set the charts alight.

She released debut single MLK in 1989 but it attracted little attention. If you want to buy it you can get it from her website for £2.

Her subsequent releases haven’t done much better.

In contrast our Mika burst on to the pop scene in January with No1 single Grace Kelly.

Just eight months later his debut album, Life In Cartoon Motion, has sold more than three million copies worldwide, including more than 900,000 in the UK, making it triple platinum.

It will come as something of a surprise at the Patent Office to discover that the rights to a trademark is now dependent on the price of singles sold by the trademark owners.

Having said that - is £2 for a twenty year old single really such a duff price? After all, if you pop over to Amazon, Mika singles turn out to be available from, erm, £1.10.