Trade Mark Infringement: International Retail Group

Problem

• Our client is an international retail group. It became aware of a retail group in a different sector changing its trade mark such that it closely resembled that of our client. Both parties traded in multiple jurisdictions.

Our Role

• We identified those jurisdictions in which our client has the strongest intellectual property rights and opposed a number of trade mark applications. Protective proceedings were issued in the High Court following which the parties were able to negotiate a settlement whereby our client’s opponent rebranded its stores.

Benefit

• After protecting our client’s position through the issue of proceedings we were able to entering into discussions with our client’s opponent from a position of strength. This resulted in fruitful negotiations which avoided protracted and expensive litigation.