Opportunistic company name registrations - has help finally arrived?

In this day and age people come up with various kinds of money making ideas, one of the latest trends being “name squatting”- the opportunistic registration of companies to protect a corporate name.

The movement initially started with opportunistic domain name registrations in the late 1990s, also referred to as “cyber squatting”. However, more recently people have also started to make “opportunistic company name registrations”. The best example of an opportunistic registration is if someone registers one or more variations of a well-known company name (Coca Cola) in order to get the company to buy the registration of the squatter for an inflated fee. The opportunistic element in any such registration is that the person making the registration only did so to cash in on the particular brand name.

However, parliament has tried to address this problem by implementing section 69 of the Companies Act 2006 (which came into force on 1 October 2008) to redress the balance. It gives businesses the right to object to any such name registrations, similar to those that exist in relation to cyber squatting, which should make the concept of brand protection easier and more effective.

In addition, the new “Company Name Adjudicator Rules 2008” provide for an exchange of evidence and a possible hearing that would be conducted by an adjudicator in the Intellectual Property Office for a fee. For further information please refer to:www.ipo.gov.uk.

It should however be noted that the adjudicator cannot deal with any complaints where the business feels that the company name registrations are too similar or too alike. There must be a genuine element of opportunism, as otherwise the matter will still be dealt with by Companies House.

In addition, the company, having made the registration, can still try to employ a number of defences, for example the name was adopted in good faith or that the applicant’s rights are not in fact adversely affected.

It remains to be been seen how effective this procedure will be in practice. Only time will tell, but this is certainly likely to be more cost effective than pursuing such a matter through the courts.

For further information or an initial discussion please contact Nicky Androsov on 01689 887 859.