Passing Off and Trademark Law
A cause of action for passing off is a form of intellectual property enforcement against the unauthorised use of a mark which is considered to be similar to another party's registered or unregistered trademarks, particularly where an action for trademark infringement based on a registered trade mark is unlikely to be successful (due to the differences between the registered trademark and the unregistered mark). Passing off is a form of common law, whereas statutory law such as the United Kingdom Trade Marks Act 1994 provides for enforcement of registered trademarks through infringement proceedings.
Passing off and the law of registered trademarks deal with overlapping factual situations, but deal with them in different ways. Passing off does not confer monopoly rights to any names, marks, get-up or other indicia. It does not recognize them as property in its own right.
Instead, the law of passing off is designed to prevent misrepresentation in the course of trade to the public, for example, that there is some sort of association between the business of defendant and that of the claimant. Another example of passing off is where the defendant does something so that the public is misled into thinking the activity is associated with the claimant, and as a result the claimant suffers some damage, under the law of passing off it may be possible for the claimant to initiate action against the defendant.
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