Case Study – Easylife Limited
The Brief
Easylife and its successor company began trading under the Easylife brand in 2000 to promote their catalogue business. In 2017 they were sued for trade mark infringement and passing off by easyGroup, the brand licensing company of Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of easyJet. Being forced to rebrand would have been a disaster for Easylife, whose millions of loyal customers know it by the name Easylife.
Easylife turned to us to help them with the case.
Our Approach &
Bespoke Solution
easyGroup has a practically unlimited budget for this kind of dispute. However the one thing EasyGroup lacked was a significant body of evidence of confusion, which is generally of central importance in these kinds of actions. Rather than just rely on the lack of documentary evidence of confusion, we set out to get witnesses in front of the court who could actually give evidence as to whether or not they had ever thought that Easylife was connected with Sir Stelios’ easyGroup business or easyJet.
The Results
We put five witnesses in front of the Court. easyGroup by contrast produced not a single witness who was prepared to say that they had been confused. easyGroup tried to have the evidence of these witnesses excluded at a pre-trial hearing but failed. At the trial, having heard Easylife’s witnesses, the trial judge ruled conclusively in Easylife’s favour, finding no trade mark infringement or passing off and revoking or cutting down the scope of protection of the registered trade mark which easyGroup had relied upon in the action.
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