an application was made in Bermuda to register a company with a similar name.

The firm's boss, Mr. Michael Butt, was disturbed when his attention was drawn to an advertisement in The Royal Gazette announcing plans to incorporate a new company under the Mid Ocean banner.

Although Mid Ocean has its operating base here, the company, like a few other Bermuda-based reinsurers, is registered in the Cayman Islands.

Mr. Butt said: "My lawyers are looking into it. Anywhere in the world, there's always the problem of others trying to ride off the back of someone else's brand name which is associated with success.

"I've no idea whether the people behind this application are seeking to do that. I have asked our lawyers to look into who is involved and what they are trying to do.

"I would prefer there not to be confusion between what we do and what someone with a similar name is doing. That's not helpful to either party.'' The Telco telephone directory currently lists six companies whose names are prefixed by `Mid Ocean'. They are: Mid Ocean Club, Mid-Ocean News, Mid-Ocean Realty, Mid Ocean Re, Mid Ocean Ship Management and Mid Ocean Traders.

* * * TV VIDEO game company Sega may kill its latest TV commercial after getting complaints from experts on mental retardation who say it disparages the handicapped.

The ad -- aimed at Sega arch-rival Nintendo -- depicts people of limited intelligence playing Nintendo's hand-held Game Boy video system, with an announcer's voice intoning: "Some people are content to be entertained by simple, one-colour electronics. Somehow these people have just never heard of Game Gear (a Sega game system).'' The ABC network declined to accept the ad, but NBC, Fox and MTV have all aired it in recent weeks.

Nintendo complained and the National Association of Superintendents of Public Residential Facilities for the Mentally Retarded fired off a letter to Sega -- prompting the company to reconsider whether it will run the commercial anymore.

"I am writing to express our outrage,'' association president Ronald Boley told Sega president and chief executive officer Thomas Kalinske on Wednesday.

The actors are portraying "clearly mentally handicapped individuals'' and the ad proceeds to "to make fun of them, even to the point of depicting the male eating what the ad purports to be pig's lips!'' Boley wrote.

If the ad "is not withdrawn, we will give it wide circulation to our members who are all CEOs of state facilities for the mentally disabled,'' Boley concluded.

Kalinske wrote back that "to resolve this matter we will resubmit the commercial to independent consumer research to test specifically for the possibility that consumers think we are making fun of or are demeaning mentally handicapped individuals.

"We certainly have no intention of engaging in any advertising that would do this,'' he said.

Before the association's objection, though, Kalinske had brushed off complaints from Nintendo.

He had said the consumer response to the ad had been "very favourable'', adding: "They find it humorous, not in bad taste, and memorable. Hopefully, it will sell the product.'' Projections call for Sega to get over 40 percent of US sales for cartridge-based video games in 1993, with Nintendo at over 50 percent. But Sega is rapidly catching up, with some analysts predicting the two will switch places in 1994.