The claimant sold its goods via the internet. Part of the trade was to sell advertising space on its web pages. The claimant had registered the mark ‘avnet’ for advertising and promotional services. The defendant was an ISP providing internet services, particularly to the aviation industry, which included allowing advertising on its web pages.
Held: The parties were in different areas of trade, and there was no infringement. The court considered the general principles as to the construction of a specification of services in a trade mark registration: ‘specifications for services should be scrutinised carefully and they should not be given a wide construction covering a vast range of activities. They should be confined to the substance, as it were, the core of the possible meanings attributable to the rather general phrase.’
Judges:
Jacob J
Citations:
[1998] FSR 16
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Reed Executive Plc, Reed Solutions Plc v Reed Business Information Ltd, Reed Elsevier (Uk) Ltd, Totaljobs Com Ltd CA 3-Mar-2004
The claimant alleged trade mark infringement by the respondents by the use of a mark in a pop-up advert.
Held: The own-name defence to trade mark infringement is limited. Some confusion may be allowed if overall the competition was not unfair . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 10 September 2022; Ref: scu.194799