Chanel Ltd v F W Woolworth & Company Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE BUCKLEY,LORD JUSTICE SHAW,LORD JUSTICE OLIVER |
| Judgment Date | 04 November 1980 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1980] EWCA Civ J1104-5 |
| Docket Number | 1979 C No. 2107 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 04 November 1980 |
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[1980] EWCA Civ J1104-5
Lord Justice Buckley
Lord Justice Shaw and
Lord Justice Oliver
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
(Civil Division)
On Appeal From The High Court of Justice Chancery Division
Grcup B
(Mr. Justice Foster)
MR. T. L. C.. CULLEN Q. C., and MR. J. BALDWIN (instructed by Messrs. Sharpe Pritchard & Co., Solicitors, London WC2, agents for Messrs. Philip Baker King & Co., Solicitors, Birmingham) appeared on behalf of the Second Defendants (Appellants).
MR. CHARLES SPARROW Q. C. and MR. W. B. SPALDING (instructed by Messrs. Wilkinson Kimbers & Staddon, Solicitors, London) appeared on behalf of the Plaintiffs (Respondents).
This is an application by the second defendants for leave to appeal against refusal by Mr. Justice Foster to discharge or modify an undertaking given by those defendants until judgment or further order in the following circumstances.
By their writ issued on 29th March 1979 the plaintiffs sued for relief of a normal character for alleged infringement of trade marks and alleged passing-off. They moved ex parte for interlocutory relief by way of an Anton Pillar Order and injunctions, and obtained ex parte relief on 29th March 1979. Before the motion came on inter partes the second defendants, Three Pears wholesale Cash and Carry Limited, believing that the only defence available to them was one under European Community Law, felt constrained to give an undertaking until judgment or further order in the terms of the notice of motion. Accordingly, when the motion came before the court inter partes, the defendants tendered such an undertaking. The plaintiffs were content, upon the defendants' giving that undertaking, to their motion being stood over until the trial. Accordingly, on 6 April 1979, the motion was disposed of in that manner by consent, without its being opened to the court and without the evidence being read.
Subsequently, the defendants made certain company searches on 2nd to 10th May. These disclosed certain apparent organisational links between the plaintiff company and the other companies (which were in fact foreign companies) through whom the goods which are the subject matter of the alleged infringements and passings-off were acquired by the defendants. These links suggest that there may exist a group structure embracing boththe plaintiff company and the foreign companies from or through whom the defendants acquired the goods. The defendants also discovered other evidence in the form of advertising material and the like, suggesting the existence of a group structure of that kind.
In November of 1979 this court decided an appeal in Revlon Incorporated v. Cripps & Lee Ltd., reported in (1980) Fleet Street Reports, 85. In that case the plaintiff companies formed part of a group of companies in which all save the parent company were wholly owned subsidiaries, or wholly owned sub-subsidiaries, of that parent company. The plaintiff company sued for passing-off Revlon goods manufactured in the United States of America by a Revlon company operating in the United States as Revlon goods manufactured in the United Kingdom by another Revlon company operating in the United Kingdom. This court held that the marks, or get-up, in that case had been developed as a house mark distinctive of the whole group and that every company in the group must be taken to have consented to the mark's being used by every other company of the group to designate the products so marked as products of the group as a whole.
The defendants in the present case contend that that decision threw a new light on the legal position of the...
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...or abusing the process of the court by seeking to raise before it the issue which could have been raised before." 13 In Chanel Ltd v F W Woolworth & Co Ltd [1981] 1 WLR 485 ( "Chanel"), the plaintiffs, in an action for trade mark infringement and passing-off, obtained ex parte interlocutor......
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...the respondent. Cases cited: (1) -Abbott v. Abbott, [1931] P. 26; (1930), 144 L.T. 598. (2) -Chanel Ltd. v. F.W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd., [1981] 1 W.L.R. 485; [1981] 1 All E.R. 745, distinguished. (3) -Cristel v. Cristel, [1951] 2 K.B. 725; [1951] 2 All E.R. 574, dicta of Denning, L.J. applied......