Kiwi company in classic David against Goliath battle
An IP company has gone to court to protect its patch from an international corporate.
An IP company has gone to court to protect its patch from an international corporate.
Wellington's Zone Corporation has taken on American Express over a website the credit card company has created that it plans to launch later this year.
Zone lawyer Andrew Brown told Justice Robert Dobson that Amex had called the website, and the services it plans to offer through it, IP Zone.
The small, Wellington-based company he represented was an intellectual property consultancy that not only had a web address of www.zoneip.co.nz, it had also trademarked the name.
Due to the similarities in the names and the fact that both would offer IP services, he sought an order that barred Amex from listing its New Zealand services on the website, as it was likely potential customers that had been referred to the Wellington company through word of mouth could be confused, resulting in a loss of income.
Amex lawyer Kate Duckworth disagreed.
She said the services it planned to offer through the website were different.
The Amex site would be an trading platform and would not offer expert IP advice.
However, she conceded that it planned to offer a referral service through the site, which would direct people to other businesses.
Miss Duckworth said it was unlikely that people would confuse the two websites as, by their very nature IP services were a costly business decision that a lot of care was taken over, rather than being an impulse by.
“We say it's a similar mark scenario, not an identical mark scenario.
“If they were looking for the plaintiff they will see immediately from the website that it's not what they were looking for and move on.”
Justice Dobson reserved his decision.
Colin Williscroft
Thu, 01 Sep 2011
Thu, 01 Sep 2011
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Kiwi company in classic David against Goliath battle
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