Trade Marks and Passing off - Pliteq Inc v iKoustic Ltd
Photo Michael Maggs Licence CC BY-SA 3.0 Jane Lambert I ntellectual Property Enterprise Court (Recorder Amanda Michaels) Pliteq Inc and another v iKoustic Ltd and anothe r [2020] EWHC 2564 (IPEC) (2 Ocr 2020) This was a dispute between Pliteq Inc , a manufacturer of acoustic damping and sound control products and its UK subsidiary and iKoustic Ltd ("iKoustiic"), their former distributor When the two sides fell out iKoustic held a large quantity of Pliteq stock which the claimants refused to take back. iKoustic used Pliteq's marks to sell off that stock while at the same time selling their own range of competing products, Pliteq complained that the use of their marks in relation to iKoustic products amounted to trade mark infringement and passing off, The defendants denied that their use of the claimants' marks amounted to infringement but if it did they could rely on the exhaustion defence set out in s.12 (1) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 and art 15 (...