Company Names Tribunal: New Fixed Fee Service
One of the many innovations of the Companies Act 2006 is a right under s.69 to object to the incorporation of a company in a name that is: (a) the same as a name associated with the person raising the objection in which the objector has goodwill; or (b) so similar to such a name that its use in the United Kingdom would be likely to mislead by suggesting a connection between the company and the objector. Examples of cases where those circumstances occurred include Glaxo Plc v. Glaxowellcome Limited [1996] FSR 388 and Direct Line Group Limited v. Direct Line Estate Agency [1997] FSR 374. In Glaxo, for instance ,. the defendants incorporated Glaxowellcome shortly after a merger between Glaxo and the Wellcome group had been announced in the hope of extracting a ransom for the name from the new holding company. Those cases anticipated the practice of domain name squatting which led to a number of expensive trade mark infringement and passing off actions such as Pitman Trai...