Archive for January, 2009
The High Court, in allowing a trade mark infringement and passing off claim, has inferred that there was a likelihood of confusion despite there being no hard evidence of confusion between the products...
Cipriani London’s rights to use its name off the menu as its own name and bad faith trade mark arguments fail – Hotel Cipriani v Cipriani (Grosvenor Street) London Ltd, High Court
HC – which owned hotels under the name ‘Cipriani’ in Italy, Portugal and Madeira - has won in its trade mark infringement action against the owners of a restaurant that called itself ‘Cipriani...
Coke Cola loses its fizz as new Company Names Tribunal orders it to change its name
Coke Cola Limited has been ordered to change its name and pay £700 to Coca-Cola by the newly-formed Company Names Tribunal. Coca-Cola had objected to the company name Coke Cola on the basis that it was...
M&S and Flowers Direct face legal action from Interflora over Google keywords
Interflora is suing Marks & Spencer and Flowers Direct in the High Court for sponsoring the word ‘Interflora’ and its common misspellings as a search engine keyword in Google’s AdWords programme....
European Commission cracks down on airlines failing to comply with new rules on pricing transparency
The European Commission is cracking down on airlines which are failing to comply with new European laws that demand pricing transparency. It has written to airline representatives requesting that members...
Ofcom fines BBC after it ‘knowingly misled’ audiences
Ofcom, the media watchdog, has fined the BBC a total of £95,000 for broadcasting 13 pre-recorded programmes ‘as live’ which included competitions. As the competitions were pre-recorded there was no...
Collective redress for consumers explored by European Commission
The European Commission has launched a consultation to explore the options to improve access to collective consumer redress. Concerns have been raised by the EU that consumers do not have sufficient remedies...
Court opens way for recent misleading selling laws to be used between competitors rather than just by regulators – Tiscali v BT, High Court
Tiscali has been suing BT in the High Court for claims made by BT in letters to Tiscali’s customers questioning whether its rival Internet service provider’s broadband service would be able to continue....
New EU non-contract jurisdiction rules come into force
The Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations (Rome II) Regulation comes into force on 11 January 2009. It creates uniform choice of law rules in cross-border non-contractual civil and commercial situations....
Most ISPs agree to code of practice regulating clarity over broadband speeds
Internet service providers covering 95% of broadband users in the UK have signed up to a voluntary code of practice designed to bring clarity to their users over what broadband speeds they can expect....