Business Law Library & Tracker
Trade Marks, Passing Off & Branding
Brand clearance, registration, confusing use, goodwill and enforcement.
Sources last reviewed 28 July 2026
Main law guides
122
Acts, regulations and codes worth reading first
Topics
60
Plain-English clusters
Published case explainers
143
Selected cases with a business lesson
Tracked updates
11
New, amended & reviewed
Plain-English explainers, not legal advice. Use the linked official source for section-level detail, and get advice for your situation.
Get legal helpMain laws
Trade Marks Act 1994
UKPGA 1994 c 26
Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Act 2017
UnitedKingdomPublicGeneralAct 2017 14
Cases
Dairy UK Ltd v Oatly AB
If you sell plant-based food or drink in the UK, do not assume a creative slogan, campaign line or trade mark is safe just because it is obviously non-dairy in...
Easygroup Limited v Easyfeetstore OÜ & Ors
For business owners, the lesson cuts both ways. If you are launching a brand, do proper trade mark checks before going live, especially if your name starts with a...
Emotional Perception AI Limited v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks
If your business is filing patents for AI systems in the UK, this case changes the framing. It is no longer a strong argument to say an ANN is not a computer...
Zaha Hadid Limited v The Zaha Hadid Foundation
If your business depends on a founder’s name, designer label, celebrity brand or other licensed trade mark, do not leave duration and exit rights to later argument....
Abbott Diabetes Care Inc v Sinocare Inc & Ors
Do not assume a product’s shape will do the same legal work as a brand name or logo. If customers, clinicians, buyers or distributors mainly identify products by...
AstraZeneca AB & Anor v Generics (UK) Limited & Ors
If your business is involved in a patent or similar rights dispute, do not assume an existing injunction will simply continue after an adverse appeal result. The...
Babek International Limited v Iceland Foods Limited & Anor
If your brand uses a stylised logo, emblem or coloured badge, this decision suggests the court will look at the registration in a practical way rather than through...
Dryrobe Limited v Caesr Group Limited
If you are launching a new brand, do not rely on small spelling changes, punctuation, or a different logo to solve a similarity problem. The court treated D-ROBE as...
easyGroup Limited v Easy Live (Services) Limited & Ors
The practical lesson is not simply ‘avoid famous brands’. It is more specific: test the exact wording you want to use, not just your full company name or logo. In...
easyGroup Limited v easyfundraising Limited & Ors
Read this case as a practical lesson in running two separate trade mark checks. First, if you own registrations, can you prove genuine use of the mark as registered...
Iconix Luxembourg Holdings SARL v Dream Pairs Europe Inc
Brand clearance should consider how signs look in real use, not just side-by-side at design stage. Product shape, angle, context and post-sale visibility can all...
Merck KGaA v Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC & Anor
If your business has territorial limits on brand use, treat them as operational rules that need technical and commercial controls behind them. Audit your websites,...
Morley's (Fast Foods) Limited v Thurairasa Nanthankumar & Ors
For small and growing food businesses, the lesson is simple: do not assume that changing the name alone makes your branding safe. The court looked at the overall...
Thatchers Cider Company Limited v Aldi Stores Limited
The lesson is not that you can never use common flavour cues, category colours or fruit imagery. The problem is pushing the design so far that it deliberately calls...
Thom Browne Inc & Anor v Adidas AG
The main lesson is to be precise when filing position marks. If your branding depends on a feature appearing on a sleeve, side panel, pocket, shoe upper or similar...
Wise Payments Limited v With Wise Limited & Ors
If you are choosing or changing a brand, do not stop at checking whether another business looks like a direct competitor. Map what your business actually does now,...
Engineer.AI Global Limited v Appy Pie Ltd & Anor
If your brand leans on a common descriptive word, treat evidence as part of the brand asset. Keep UK-specific sales figures, campaign records, website metrics,...
Extreme Networks Limited v Extreme E Limited
If you are launching a new brand, do not assume you are safe just because your business does something slightly different from an earlier trade mark owner. This...
Lifestyle Equities CV and another v Ahmed and another
For business owners, this case draws a practical line between company exposure and personal exposure in brand disputes. If your company uses a sign that infringes...
Lifestyle Equities CV v Amazon UK Services Ltd
Cross-border ecommerce teams should not assume that a foreign website stays legally foreign. Currency, delivery, checkout wording, search results and customer...
Morley’s (Fast Foods) Limited v Jeyatharini Sivakumar & Ors
The practical message is clear. If your business has settled a branding dispute, do not treat the approved logo as a flexible starting point for future redesigns....
SkyKick UK Ltd v Sky Ltd
Trade mark applications should match a real commercial plan. Filing for everything can backfire if the specification has no proper rationale. Startups should seek...
LUEN FAT METAL AND PLASTIC MANUFACTORY CO LTD v FUNKO UK LTD
For small businesses, the main lesson is to check both sides of the trade mark equation. If you are enforcing a mark, be ready to prove genuine use and show the...
Zoe Evans & Ors. v Anytime Clubs UK Limited & Anor.
If you run a franchise, keep clear records showing who controls local marketing in practice, not just on paper. A general right to protect brand standards is not...
Kabab-Ji SAL (Lebanon) v Kout Food Group (Kuwait)
For ordinary businesses, the durable lesson is not really about high-level arbitration theory. It is about contract housekeeping. If you trade with a company in a...