Think Carefully Before Filing Far-reaching Trade Marks

SkyKick had argued (amongst other things) that Sky had acted in bad faith by protecting its marks for an overly broad list of goods and services, which limited what other companies could do in terms of their own brands in these areas (see our previous article here).

Although the concept of acting in bad faith is not defined in legislation, over the years it's been developed by case law to cover "dealings which fall short of the standard of acceptable commercial behaviour".

In its earlier decision, the court found that "Sky could not, and did not, intend to use the Trade Marks across the breadth of the category [goods and services]" and some of its applications were filed "pursuant to a deliberate strategy of seeking very broad protection of the Trade Marks regardless of whether it was