Citation:
Rule of thumb:Can you use the name & colours of football clubs on souvenirs? As a general rule, yes you can, and this is not a trade mark infringement – some exceptions can be made where it is too similar & this is a notoriously difficult area of law to navigate strongly & clearly.
Judgment:
The basic facts of this case were that souvenirs of Arsenal, such as scarves, were being sold by Reed. Reed argued that these were not the trade mark of Arsenal and the name Arsenal was in the dictionary. This raised a very difficult point of trade mark law & showed the difficulty in making these arguments, ‘In that context the essential function of a trade mark is to guarantee the identity of origin of the marked goods or services to the consumer or end user by enabling him, without any possibility of confusion, to distinguish the goods or services from others which have another origin ... it must offer a guarantee that all the goods or services bearing it or supplied under the control of a single undertaking which is responsible for their quality’, paragraph 47, ‘the trade mark proprietor is entitled to protect his specific interests as proprietor, that is, to ensure that the trade mark can fulfil its functions and that, therefore, the exercise of that right must be reserved to cases in which a third party’s use of the sign affects or is liable to affect the functions of the trade mark, in particular its essential function of guaranteeing to consumers the origins of the goods’, paragraph 21
Warning: This is not professional legal advice. This is not professional legal education advice. Please obtain professional guidance before embarking on any legal course of action. This is just an interpretation of a Judgment by persons of legal insight & varying levels of legal specialism, experience & expertise. Please read the Judgment yourself and form your own interpretation of it with professional assistance.