Trade mark decision

BL Number

O/004/06

Decision date

29 December 2005

Hearing officer

Professor Ruth Annand

Mark

AJIT WEEKLY

Classes

16

Applicant for Invalidation

Sadhu Singh Hamdard Trust

Registered Proprietor

Ajit Newspaper Advertising, Marketing & Communications Inc

Result

Section 47(1) based on Section 3(6): Invalidation successful.

Points Of Interest

• The Appointed Person reviews the law relating to “bad faith” in considerable details and clarifies the fact that the decision in the TWINSECTRA case did not change the definition of what constituted “bad faith”.

Summary

This was an appeal to the Appointed Person of the Hearing Officer’s decision dated 3 February 2005 (BL O/030/05). In that decision the Hearing Officer had found in favour of the opponent under Section 3(6) but did not consider other grounds under Sections 5(2)(b) and 5(4)(a). On appeal the applicant claimed the decision under Section 3(b) was wrong and asked that the proceedings be resubmitted to the Registry for determination of the Sections 5(2)(b) and 5(4)(a) grounds. In the event this latter request was not pursued so the Appointed Person only had to deal with the Section 3(6) ground.

The Appointed Person reviewed the evidence filed in the proceedings and the Hearing Officer’s factual findings in considerable detail. She also considered the effect of recent Court of Appeal and House of Lords decisions as to what constitutes “bad faith”. Having concluded that the Hearing Officer’s findings of fact were justified the Appointed Person went on to support the Hearing Officer’s finding of “bad faith” under Section 3(6) and dismissed the appeal.