Coke Cola infringes Coca-Cola's intellectual property by registering itself as a limited Company

23 December 2008

Coke Cola infringes Coca-Cola's intellectual property by registering itself as a limited Company

By Corinne Day

It seems bizarre to me as a trainee solicitor specialising in trade mark law that a company felt that it could register itself as 'Coke Cola Limited', which was registered with Companies House on 29 February 2008.

Of course, needless to say, the Coca-Cola Company were not too happy about this blatant breach of its intellectual property rights and filed an application in October of this year for a change of name of this registration under the provisions of s 69 (1)(b) of the Companies Act 2006. A copy of this application was sent to the primary respondent's registered office on 7 October 2008, in accordance with rule 3(2) of the Companies Names Adjudicator Rules 2008. The primary respondent did not file a defence within the 1 month period specified by the adjudicator under Rule 3(3). Rule 3(4) states that the 'primary respondent, before the end of that period, shall file a counter-statement on the appropriate form, otherwise the adjudicator may treat it as not opposing the application and may make an order under s 73(1).' Under the provisions of this rule, the adjudicator may exercise discretion so as to treat the respondent as opposing the application, however in this case, because the respondent did not respond to the allegations made, the adjudicator treated the respondent as not opposing the application.

The adjudicator thus made the following order, in accordance with s 73(1). Coke Cola Limited had to change its name within one month of the date of the order to one that is not an offending name; Coke Cola Limited was ordered to take steps to facilitate the making of that change; Coke Cola Limited was ordered not cause to permit any steps to be taken to result in another company being registered with a name that is an offending name.

Coke Cola Limited was also ordered to pay the Coca-Cola Company costs.

Corinne Day is a trainee solicitor who specialises in information technology law and intellectual property law. She can be contacted via e-mail on corinne.day@lawdit.co.uk