Quote:
Originally Posted by ensign14
I'm a little surprised by the judgment. In that, once he found Team Lotus had lost the right to the trademark, that anyone other than Group Lotus could use it. Especially given Fernandes licensed it from GL.
Had he not made that finding, I'd've agreed with the outcome; TL came first, GL basically traded off TL's reputation rather than vice versa. So when TL and GL separated TL should have first dibs on the name in F1, and that was backed up by the various inter-company agreements. But once TL lost the right to lose the name, surely anyone wanting to use Lotus in F1 would be trading on GL's reputation. I couldn't start Pagani F1, even though Pagani has never raced.
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I'm trying to get my head around this judgement too. On the face of it, it doesn't make sense. As I expected, TL did loose the right to the Mark and GL did continue to trade on the Mark. That meant anybody wishing to use the Mark in an automotive context would need to license it via GL... which is what TL did. He seems to have based his findings on the intrinsic goodwill of the TL Mark which is different to the Mark itself. Determining where the goodwill in a Mark lies is one of the foggiest aspects of trademark law. If the parties are so minded... this could spend a lot of time in appeals.