GeekLawyer’s Blog

Well thank heavens for IPKat.

At last, after nearly two years moaning about the lack of one, Geeklawyer has a, TADA!!!!, legitimate IP & motorbikes story. It isn’t a scintillating one to non-IP lawyer bikers, but hey WTF, Geeklawyer will take what he can get.

Some scallywag imported Honda motorcycles into the UK from Australia where he purchased them from Honda Australia.

One of the controversial uses of trademarks is to screw consumers. They do have different uses of course and these may act in parallel and for the benefit of the consumer. For example as a designation of origin or quality: fair enough - Geeklawyer wants to be sure his Viagra is produced by Pfizer, and not Tommy Chan in Beijing - thank you very much.

Manufacturers however have a concern with ‘perfect pricing’, as economists call it (perfect for whom - exactly?). In China they want to sell Honda Motorcycles at a price the consumers can afford. A nice whizzy Fireblade for £2000 for example. Entrepreneurial types realised they could buy a gazillion there and ship them to the Western markets and triple the prize and slice out the margin. Good for them, good for the consumer but the makers got utterly ramshanked.

Enter trademarks stage left. These are then used to partition markets into nice easily humped segments. A Trademark in the EU is used, as currently permitted by EU trademark law, to prevent Mr Derek Trotter doing grey imports of Hondas.

Honda happy. Consumer unhappy. Now of course if Honda consent to these imports then it’s a different game: they know and agree to this act.

So one would imagine that these Honda people would look at the delivery address and say “hmmm, a UK motorcycle dealer wishes to buy and import into the EU the motorcycles that we are selling. He will, therefore & of course, be selling them to consumers“. But no, Honda Australia has said that they didn’t agree to that. Honda’s argument is, one assumes, that these were being sold as modern art, or paperweights perhaps.

Perhaps they should have kept them as ballast to hold down their soaring intellects.

Anyway, to cut a long story longer. They said that the UK importers attempt to get discovery of Honda’s letters was a fishing expedition. How the judge (possibly Andrew Simmonds QC - but that’s not clear) bought this argument is unclear; perhaps Honda’s solicitors had got Ruthie to sit behind counsel wearing her pink leathers: it’d distract even Lord Denning - and he’s dead.

The Court of Appeal wasn’t having any of this tosh - it said that having a chat with the Ozzies over a pint of Fosters was necessary since their thoughts were probably just a little bit relevant and not really a random wander through their filing cabinet.

Seems obvious to Geeklawyer. But then he’s not a judge. Nor even a QC. Astonishing but true, though he does have a boy scout litigation badge.