Bringing you monthly news of key developments in intellectual property law.
Trade Marks
O2 Holdings Ltd & another v Hutchison 3G Ltd
(Court of Appeal)
In this long-running dispute between two mobile phone service providers, the Court of Appeal has referred two questions to the European Court of Justice on the interaction between trade mark infringement and the Comparative Advertising Directive (97/55/EC).
First, the Court asked whether the use of a mark for the purposes of a comparison which does not affect the essential function of the trade mark (to guarantee trade origin) is prevented by Article 5(1) of the Trade Marks Directive. Second, the ECJ was asked to consider whether or not the use of the trade mark for the purposes of comparative advertising must be either "necessary" or "indispensable" to such advertising. As an aside to these questions, Jacob L.J. noted that in his view, there is simply no reasonable need for trade mark law to cover this type of use, when there are
