Canary Wharf Group Plc v The Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, High Court
CWG – the owner of 14 million square feet of office and retail space in the Canary Wharf Estate – has failed to persuade the High Court that the UK’s Intellectual Property Office should have granted it a registered trade mark for “CANARY WHARF” following its 2013 trade mark application. The IPO had rejected the application on grounds of lacking distinctiveness and it designated the geographical origin. The Court agreed that it was known as a business district and was associated beyond CWG’s own property. Consumers would expect the name to be an indicator of geographic origin.
The Canary Wharf name dated back as far as the 1930s. It has been used to describe transport links in the area too. CWG may have had a better chance of succeeding that the name referred to a private estate rather than a geographic area, if it had made its trade mark application in the early days before the development of the area. However, given that 30 years have passed since the original construction of the estate and the public would consider the name to refer to a general business district, the hearing officer was right to refuse the trade mark application, according to the Court.