General Conference Sues Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference over Use of Adventist Trademark/Logo
20 September 2019 | The General Conference (GC) of Seventh-day Adventists is suing the recently-formed Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference (NCC) over the use of the Adventist trademark and logo.
According to the Standard Digital, the GC, via the East Kenya Union Conference (EKUC), is asking Kenya’s High Court to ban the NCC from operating as a religious entity. The legal argument is that the NCC should not be able to operate as a religious organization because it is registered as a private company.
The GC is claiming that the Adventist denomination has exclusive rights to the name Seventh-day Adventist.
The case was filed September 18.
The NCC has also been accused of trespass and invasion, as it has taken over and is currently running a number of churches owned by the denomination. According to the Standard Digital, these include Mountain View SDA, Makandi SDA, KPCU SDA and Saika West SDA.
Deep disagreements continue to divide the denomination in the region. One major source of the tension is a dispute over a 2015 election in which heads of the Central Kenya Conference (part of the EKUC) of the denomination were chosen. Some felt that the election process was manipulated and that appointments had been biased by ethnic divisions.
In the wake of the election, the Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference was formed as a rival to the Central Kenya Conference.
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