Lawyers for Radio Adelaide are seeking a temporary injunction to prevent the national broadcaster rebranding its local station as “ABC Radio Adelaide”.

The legal action claims the trademark “Radio Adelaide” for the community station, and seeks to stop the national broadcaster from using the words in its re-brand, scheduled to start on January 9 next year.

The national broadcaster provoked outrage at Radio Adelaide when it announced earlier this month that all its local radio stations would be rebranded to feature capital city names – in South Australia’s case, 891 ABC would become ABC Radio Adelaide.

Counsel for Radio Adelaide, Ian Robertson SC, told a federal court hearing in Adelaide this morning that “what the ABC is trying to do is to piggyback on [Radio Adelaide’s] brand loyalty”.

“It’s a brand loyalty that exists from at least 2003,” he told the court.

He said the ABC was “trampling all over my client’s brand – a brand that has been built to over a decade”.

Robertson said an injunction against the national broadcaster would not prevent the national broadcaster from rolling out its interstate local radio rebranding (ABC Radio Melbourne et cetera) and that it was “preposterous” to suggest it would.

He accepted that “intuitively” there would be “prejudice” against the ABC’s planned national rebranding if it’s Adelaide rebrand were prevented.

But he said there was no evidence a listener of Sydney ABC Radio, for example, would be concerned by the non-existence of a station named “ABC Radio Adelaide”.

Robertson argued “Radio Adelaide” was more than just a descriptive phrase, but an established brand.

But counsel for the ABC Mark Douglas told the court “Radio Adelaide” was “the most generic term imaginable” and that were inherent risks in a business attempting to associate its brand with generic terms.

“There are a number of people involved in conducting [the broadcast of] radio in the location of Adelaide,” he said.

He argued that “Radio Adelaide” merely described a medium and a location, whereas “ABC Radio Adelaide” constituted a brand (ABC Radio) followed by a location (Adelaide).

But Robertson said that “the only relevant holder of the trademark is my client” and “the only radio service operating in Adelaide using the name ‘Radio Adelaide’ is my client”.

He said that the groundswell of support behind Radio Adelaide since the ABC announced its planned rebrand demonstrated that the community radio station had a particular listenership that was distinct from the listenership of the ABC’s radio content.

But Douglas countered that there was a significant “overlap” between the demographics of those listening to ABC radio and community radio stations.

He further argued that the court should not be considering a “false comparison” between the terms “Radio Adelaide” and ABC Radio Adelaide”, but instead a comparison between “5UV Radio Adelaide” and “ABC Radio Adelaide”.

He said “5UV Radio Adelaide” was the name of the trademark the community radio station had sought “as recently as a few days ago”.

Robertson accepted that the “direct comparison is of 5UV Radio Adelaide and ABC Radio Adelaide”.

Douglas added that there was “no evidence before your honour to support the assertion […] that there is significant brand penetration for radio station 5UV”.

He said that the proposed ABC Radio Adelaide and the existing Radio Adelaide logos were could not plausibly be confused – and added that there would be a real monetary impact if the ABC were forced to delay the rollout of its new branding.

In contrast, he argued, any risk of damage to community broadcaster’s brand was merely speculative, based on assertion.

Douglas also suggested that because the domain name www.radioadelaide.com.au was not owned by the applicant, “it isn’t even the case that that term – Radio Adelaide – is maintained by the applicant as a unique web presence”.

The community radio station operates on the web under the domain name – www.radio.adelaide.edu.au

Justice Natalie Charlesworth will deliver her judgement Friday afternoon.