Claimant and Defendant were both derived from an original company founded by Sir Robert McAlpine. After his death, two companies divided on geographical lines into separate companies.
In 2001, Defendant decided to rebrand itself as ‘McAlpine’ and drop word ‘Alfred’ from name.
Claimant sued for passing off, claiming that Defendant was misrepresenting it was associated with Claimant so that:
Any bad publicity associated with Defendant would reflect upon Claimant; and
Defendant would benefit from Claimant’s goodwill and would be trading on the joint goodwill of the 2 parties, causing a dilution in value of Claimant’s goodwill.
Is a misrepresentation by Defendant.
Loss of control of reputation: is a real risk that Defendant’s actions in future will damage Claimant’s goodwill; e.g.:
Any noteworthy engineering mishap
Any work that attracts public anger
Dilution: deception caused by loss of prefix ‘Alfred’ by Defendant would cause a dilution in value of Claimant’s name.
IP law notes fully updated for recent exams at Oxford and Cambridge. Th...
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