Victory for tea shop in trade mark dispute

13 03 2009 United Kingdom

A small tea shop in West London has won its dispute with a multinational company over the right to use its unique logo.

Jemma Swallow owns The Tea Box in Richmond with her partner, Mike de Souza, and designed the logo when they opened the tea shop two years ago. They decided to protect their design by formally registering it with the UK Intellectual Property Office.

As part of its trade mark approval process, the Tea Box logo was published by the IPO on its website and in its online journal. At this point a company called Teekanne GmbH of Dusseldorf, Germany, caused a stir by registering an official objection.

The German company claimed that The Tea Box logo is ‘confusingly similar’ to their own logo registered in 2004. Apart from the fact that both logos represent a tea pot – or perhaps a kettle in the case of the German trade mark – they had nothing in common. The two tea pots were different in shape, form and colour, one traditional, the other modernistic.

But the German company was not deterred by such details.

The owners of The Tea Box were worried that a legal battle with this large German company would prove very expensive. They were soon contacted by intellectual property law specialists, Withers & Rogers LLP, who offered to defend their trade mark claim at a formal tribunal hearing.

Mark Armitage, a partner at Withers & Rogers, said that the IPO agreed with the view that the design of the Tea Box logo was insufficient to cause confusion. Teekanne have decided not to proceed further with their dispute and Withers & Rogers are seeking reimbursement of their costs from the German firm.

Ms Swallow said she was delighted by the outcome, which might have been different if Withers & Rogers had not come to their rescue.

This case has hit the headlines in the UK press, helping The Tea Box to become known locally and across most of the UK.

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