Today the Supreme Court issued its judgment in the latest instalment of the very long running trade mark dispute between Sky (the well known broadcaster and telecoms company) and SkyKick in which Sky had claimed infringement of a number of their trade mark registrations for ‘SKY’ by the use of the mark 'SkyKick' on email migration and cloud storage products and services.  

One key aspect of the case has been: were Sky’s trade mark registrations invalid (in whole or in part) for having been filed in bad faith on the basis that there was no intention to use the marks in respect of the broad list of goods and services applied for?

This raised important questions about the approach to trade mark filing and enforcement in the UK.

Our previous commentary on this case, including on the original High Court finding (which held the ‘SKY’ trade mark registrations were invalid in part) and the Court of Appeal decision (which created the uncertainty) can be found here:

Sky and Skykick are not quite yet able to kick their trade mark dispute to the curb

Broad trade mark specifications given a (sky)kicking

Kluwer Trademark Blog - (SKY)KICKing important questions of clarity and bad faith from the UK to the CJEU

Mid-year refresher of key 2018 United Kingdom Trade Mark and Design decisions

The Supreme Court has upheld SkyKick’s appeal on the issue of bad faith filings and confirmed that the High Court was entitled to find that the ‘SKY’ marks were applied for in bad faith to the extent that it did, and that the Court of Appeal was wrong to reverse that finding. 

This does give clarity on this issue and has a number of implications for trade mark owners.

Commentary on what this finding means for both brand owners and stake holders (such as the UKIPO), and on the other interesting take aways from the Supreme Court judgment, will follow this post.

In the meantime, the judgment of the case, and the much shorter press release, are available.