The well established fast food delivery app Just Eat, has succeeded in their bid to prevent the registration of a similar brand name at the UK Intellectual Property Office.
The well established fast food delivery app Just Eat, has succeeded in their bid to prevent the registration of a similar brand name at the UK Intellectual Property Office.
The mark in question was ‘Just Pizza & Pasta’ and was applied for by Mitch Sorbie in 2016, in class 43 for fast food restaurant services.
The mark was in the form of a logo and did include some stylisation in respect of the font as well as imagery of a pizza slice and some pasta on a fork.
This was accepted by the UK Intellectual Property Office examiner in the examination stage and moved on to the publication stage.
Just Eat soon filed a formal opposition. The basis for this opposition was three existing marks, the word ‘Just’, the words ‘Just Eat’ and the ‘Just Eat’ logo which are all registered in class 43.
Considering the opposition, Ann Corbett representing the UK Intellectual Property Office focussed on the ‘Just’ mark.
Ruling that the services offered under the marks are identical, Corbett ruled that the word ‘Just’ was the distinctive and dominant element of the applied-for mark.
Considering the level of similarity between the marks, Corbett ruled there was a medium level of visual and aural similarity between the marks, with conceptual similarity being of a higher level.
Taking this into account, Ann Corbett ruled there would be indirect confusion and therefore Just Eat’s opposition was successful.
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