After SkyKick at the UK Supreme Court, will bad faith now be the new battleground in trade mark disputes?

After SkyKick at the UK Supreme Court, will bad faith now be the new battleground in trade mark disputes?

Journal Article

1 online resource (pages 287)

Five years ago, in an editorial for this journal, I described the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Sky v SkyKick Case C-371/18 as ‘the disappointment of the decade’.1 It would not be fair to describe the 145-page judgment of the UK Supreme Court that now puts an end to this saga2 as another disappointment as it is a plainly sensible one, but perhaps not one that will entirely solve the core problems in our trade mark system which underlie the case. Having run over 10 judgments and 8 years, it feels odd to spend time recapping what this was about—and the underlying dispute which ultimately resolved against SkyKick probably does not matter much to most of us. The important fact is that Sky had a habit of filing for very broad and long trade mark specifications, without any intention of ever using for many of the goods and services included. This long running case has thus drawn attention for its consideration of whether such a practice amounts to ‘bad faith’, and a basis for seeking to invalidate a broad or lengthy registration.

Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 20, 5, 2025.

Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, 2025.

English

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