{"id":3484,"date":"2022-04-11T11:38:03","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T03:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/?p=3484"},"modified":"2024-09-09T09:11:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T01:11:35","slug":"trademarks-infringement-of-registered-trademarks-and-passing-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/trademarks-infringement-of-registered-trademarks-and-passing-off\/","title":{"rendered":"TRADEMARKS \u2013 INFRINGEMENT OF \u2013 REGISTERED TRADEMARKS AND PASSING OFF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In brief<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;While enterprises and corporations are commonly appraised based on the relative value of their physical assets, the equally important Intellectual Property (IP) rights they control are sometimes disregarded. It is a common fallacy that a typical business that only engages in commerce and does not engage in creative output or ground-breaking innovation has little to do with intellectual property. In truth, intellectual property might be as simple as a company&#8217;s logo or the packaging or design of its products. As a result, in today&#8217;s market, wise business owners must be aware of what rights they may have that extend well beyond their physical assets, as well as how they might defend such rights.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Q.<\/strong> I recently discovered that a firm with a similar name to mine exists. Is it possible for me to pursue legal action against them?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>A.<\/strong> Yes, you can sue the corporation for trademark infringement since the unauthorised use of a registered mark as part of a trade or company name could be grounds for a lawsuit. This is due to the fact that once your trademark is registered, you now enjoy exclusive and exclusive ownership of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What constitutes an infringement of a trademark?&nbsp;<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;A person who is not the registered proprietor of the trade mark or a registered user of the trade mark utilising by way of authorised use infringes on it by using a mark that is identical to it or so nearly resembling it as to deceive or create confusion in the course of business. That being said, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">s.38 TMA 1976<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> governs trademark infringement where it is held that in a case where the use is on the goods or in physical relation to them, or in an advertising circular, or other advertisement issued to the public, as importing a reference to a person who has the right to use the trade mark either as a registered proprietor or as a registered user, or to goods with which the person is connected in the course of trade.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Q.<\/strong> Ok what if the other party argues that their organisation is not entirely similar to yours?&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>A.<\/strong> It didn&#8217;t matter if the infringing mark was in capital or lowercase as long as the name was likely to cause confusion, and there shouldn&#8217;t be a microscopic examination of the minute differences between the competing names in determining the possibility of misunderstanding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Whether the defendants committed the tort of passing off the plaintiff&#8217;s products as their own?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;In essence, the test requires a plaintiff in a passing off action based on a mark or get-up to show that the plaintiff has goodwill in the company about the mark or get-up, misrepresentation, and loss to the plaintiff&#8217;s goodwill caused by the misrepresentation.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ortus Expert White Sdn Bhd v Nor Yanni bt Adom &amp; Anor [2022] 2 MLJ 67 <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the learned High Court judge was convinced that the plaintiff&#8217;s registered brand and the get-up of the plaintiff&#8217;s products attract business and customers . Furthermore, the High Court judge determined that the defendants misrepresented the plaintiff&#8217;s registered trademarks, resulting in deception. Finally, the plaintiff&#8217;s goods and the defendant&#8217;s product are in direct rivalry with one another, and the court will readily infer that the plaintiff&#8217;s goodwill would be harmed as a result of lost sales and loss of exclusive use of the plaintiff&#8217;s registered brand and get-up.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What constitutes trademark infringement and what can I do when there is infringement?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1564],"tags":[3109,1543,1590],"class_list":["post-3484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-intellectual-property","tag-copyright","tag-infringement","tag-infringement-confusion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3514,"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions\/3514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yhalaw.com.my\/my\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}