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Specsavers sues over supermarket's advertising campaign for spectacles
Specsavers has initiated legal proceedings against Asda after the supermarket giant launched its range of low-price glasses in October 2009 with an advertising campaign featuring overlapping ellipses and the slogan “Be a real spec saver at Asda”.
Specsavers claims that Asda’s campaign infringed its trade marks and took advantage of its reputation. The slogan, it argues, was designed to mislead customers and harm Specsavers’ business, whilst the logo used by Asda was sufficiently similar to the Specsavers logo that it was likely to confuse customers.
Under section 10(2)(b) of the Trade Marks Act 1994, a registered trade mark is infringed when a person or company uses a sign which is similar to the registered trade mark and does so in relation to goods or services that are either identical with or similar to those goods or services for which the trade mark is registered, and there exists a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public.
In November, the Court decided that that there was sufficient evidence that Asda’s campaign could threaten Specsavers’ reputation to warrant an expedited trial, which has now been scheduled for April 2010. Specsavers were originally seeking a January trial date, but Asda’s barrister succeeded in pushing back the expedited date on the grounds that the company’s lawyers needed additional time to prepare their defence, because they would be (working for free) stacking supermarket shelves over Christmas, to get to know its client’s business better. A later trial date was also necessary, it was argued, because Asda’s lawyers planned to conduct a wide-ranging survey of Asda shoppers, in order to determine whether they had been misled by its advertising.
How this dispute will be resolved remains to be seen but in the meantime, the press coverage on the matter will no doubt be indirectly assisting Asda in advertising its new optical range by flagging to readers that it might be well worth taking a trip to Asda to hunt out some optical bargains.