CLASS 46
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MONDAY, 15 JULY 2013
Farmers' titles clash in court
In Evegate Publishing Ltd v Newsquest Media (Southern) Ltd [2013] EWHC 1975 (Ch), 10 July 2013), the High Court for England and Wales (Mr Justice Asplin) dismissed a passing off claim brought by Evegate, the publisher of a farming magazine called "South East Farmer", against Newsquest, which launched a newspaper called "Southern Farmer". The judge also dismissed a trade mark infringement claim in respect of Evegate's UK figurative mark "South East Farmer" for "periodicals, magazines and newspapers".
According to the judges, the title "South East Farmer" did have goodwill and a reputation, but it was limited glossy magazines sold by subscription. However, there was no misrepresentation that was likely to deceive a substantial part of the relevant readership, since the evidence of confusion was of a low level which arose from the descriptive nature of the two names and there was no evidence that advertisers were confused or deceived at all.
So far as the trade mark infringement claim was concerned, there was no way that Newsquest had infringed Evegates' figurative mark since there was no no likelihood of confusion between the mark and the title "Southern Farmer". Further, while Evegate's trade mark had a reputation in a substantial part of the UK, there was no infringement under section 10(3) of the Act (which protects marks with a reputation) since there was no evidence that the average consumer would make a link between that mark and "Southern Farmer".
Posted by: Blog Administrator @ 05.29
Tags: UK, infringement, passing off,
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Farmers' titles clash in court
According to the judges, the title "South East Farmer" did have goodwill and a reputation, but it was limited glossy magazines sold by subscription. However, there was no misrepresentation that was likely to deceive a substantial part of the relevant readership, since the evidence of confusion was of a low level which arose from the descriptive nature of the two names and there was no evidence that advertisers were confused or deceived at all.
Tags: UK, infringement, passing off,
Sharing on Social Media? Use the link below...Perm-A-Link: https://www.marques.org/blogs/class46?XID=BHA3290
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