Taxi Trade Mark Tussle.

A High Court judge granted an injunction on Tuesday, 29th March preventing a Belfast taxi firm from infringing the trade mark rights of a competitor.


Two companies, fonaCAB and Value Cabs, had been providing their taxi services under the brands “fonaCAB” and “Value Cabs” for many years in Belfast. In January 2020, a competitor named Michael Hicks set up a taxi company under the name FonaValue and 7 Seater Taxi Ltd. He has operated a taxi service under the brand “FonaValue” since then.


Given “FonaValue” fuses the first words of the established “fonaCAB” and “Value Cabs” brands, there were concerns about confusion in the marketplace. When these concerns were voiced by fonaCAB and Value Cabs, a £2.5m payment was allegedly demanded by FonaValue. In response to this demand, the two companies sued FonaValue for trade mark infringement and passing off.


When granting the injunction, Mr Justice McAlinden commented:


"It is an utterly shameless and blatant attempt to extort money. Bearing in mind what I regard as the most reprehensible conduct of the second-named defendant (Mr Hicks), I have no hesitation in making an order in the terms sought. A clear message has to be sent out: if people try these stunts they will backfire on them badly.”


This decision is useful in that it serves as a stark warning to opportunistic companies who try to take a shortcut and piggyback off the good name, renown and success of an established competitor. Although a company may believe such shortcuts are a clever and enterprising way of doing business, in reality they cause more problems than they are worth as the defendant is often forced to re-brand and is left to face a hefty litigation bill.


Related

Privacy Settings

Essential
Privacy Settings
Saves the current privacy settings.
Retention period: This cookie will remain for 30 days.
PHP SESSION ID
Saves the current PHP session.
Retention period: This cookie will only remain for the current browser session.
Performance and Analytics Cookies
These technologies allow us to analyze website usage in order to measure and improve performance.
Google Analytics
This is a web analytics service. It allows the user to measure advertising ROI, track flash, video and social networking sites and applications.
Provider: Google Ireland Limited - Google Building Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin, D04 E5W5, Ireland
Technical name: _ga,_gat_gtag_UA_120928533_6,_gid
Show more details

Data Purposes

This list represents the purposes of the data collection and processing.
- Marketing
- Analytics

Technologies Used

- Cookies
- Pixel

Data Collected

This list represents all (personal) data that is collected by or through the use of this service.

- App updates
- Click path
- Date and time of visit
- Device information
- Downloads
- Flash version
- Location information
- IP address
- JavaScript support
- Pages visited
- Purchase activity
- Referrer URL
- Usage data
- Widget interactions
- Browser information

Legal Basis

In the following the required legal basis for the processing of data is listed.

- Art. 6 para. 1 s. 1 lit. a GDPR

Location of Processing

- European Union

Retention Period

The retention period is the time span the collected data is saved for the processing purposes. The data needs to be deleted as soon as it is no longer needed for the stated processing purposes.
The Retention Period depends on the type of the saved data. Each client can choose how long Google Analytics retains data before automatically deleting it.
Data Recipients

- Google Ireland Limited, Alphabet Inc., Google LLC

Data Protection Officer of Processing Company

Below you can find the email address of the data protection officer of the processing company.

https://support.google.com/policies/contact/general_privacy_form

Transfer to Third Countries

This service may forward the collected data to a different country. Please note that this service might transfer the data outside of the EU/EEA and to a country without the required data protection standards. If the data is transferred to the US, there is a risk that your data can be processed by US authorities, for control and surveillance measures, possibly without legal remedies. Below you can find a list of countries to which the data is being transferred. This can be for different reasons like storing or processing.

United States of America,Singapore,Chile,Taiwan

Click here to read the privacy policy of the data processor https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

Click here to opt out from this processor across all domains https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de

Click here to read the cookie policy of the data processor https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en

Storage Information

Below you can see the longest potential duration for storage on a device, as set when using the cookie method of storage and if there are any other methods used.

- Maximum age of cookie storage: 2 years

  Accept all
Please upgrade your browser. This website is not compatible with Internet Explorer.