Trade mark

The Chancery Division ruled, among other things, that the defendant companies’ use of the word “FLYNN” when rebranding imported Epanutin, a drug used in the treatment of epilepsy, was a “trade mark use” and did not fall within s 11(2)(b) of the Trade Marks Act 1994, and, therefore infringed the claimant company’s trade mark. The defendants could only rely on Art 36 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to defeat the claim of infringement if they could show that Epanutin had been placed on the market in the exporting member state by the same entity seeking to prevent its import into the UK and they had failed to do so.