At the end of last year, and shortly before the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (‘REULA’) came into force in the UK on 1 January 2024 (the legislation that officially brought an end to the principle of supremacy of EU law in the UK), the UK Court of Appeal departed from CJEU case law on statutory acquiescence.

Industrial Cleaning Equipment (Southampton) Ltd v Intelligent Cleaning Equipment Holdings Co Ltd & Anor was a trade mark infringement claim in which the defendant had sought to rely on the defence of statutory acquiescence. Lord Justice Arnold acknowledged the power of the Court of Appeal to depart from ‘retained EU law’ (under the powers given to it by the Withdrawal Act) on the same basis as the Supreme Court would be able to depart from one of its own decisions.

This is the first time the Court of Appeal has diverged from CJEU retained law and demonstrates that the UK courts are willing to revisit EU law and make changes where they consider that clarity is needed, or a different approach should be adopted. This decision (and the Advancetrack decision covered in our previous blog post) give some indication as to the way in which the senior UK courts will approach a post-REULA legal landscape.

Emma Dixon explains more in an article for the Wolters Kluwer Trade Mark Blog, and you can read the full article here.