Abstract:
One of the thorny questions in infringement claims brought under the Trade Marks Act is the following: is there a requirement for “trade mark use” in the infringement provision? The difficulties in this area are evident from the fact that, although this question is supposed to have been answered by the European Court of Justice in 2002, two leading academics in the UK maintain that “some controversy and uncertainty” surrounds this question in the EU today. Uncertainty in trade mark law is bad news for the business community. For Singapore, the answer was previously found in the High Court’s 2005 judgment in Nation Fittings (M) Sdn Bhd v Oystertec plc [2006] 1 SLR(R) 712. Now, in City Chain Stores (S) Pte Ltd v Louis Vuitton Malletier [2010] 1 SLR 382, the Court of Appeal has weighed in on this debate.