Affinage and A.S.P. 2

For completeness, I should note that IHC UK has appealed Logan J’s decision earlier this month finding that it infringed IHC Australia’s registered trade mark for AFFINAGE. Summary here.

Interestingly, Logan J has granted a stay of his order to remove all references to A.S.P. from IHC UK’s Web site at www.affinage.com.

You will recall that IHC UK owns AFFINAGE outside Australia and had adopted A.S.P. at least partly to deal with the fact that it could no longer use “its” trade mark in Australia.

Logan J appears to have considered a stay pending the outcome of the appeal was in order as IHC UK:

  1. Had removed all references to Australia (including the drop down country box) from its web site at www.affinage.com;
  2. IHC UK was having some sort of global re-launch of A.S. P. in the UK soon, involving 150 or so distributors from around the world;
  3. His Honour accepted that the decision that the modified Web site infringed had been a “difficult one”; and
  4. IHC Australia had not sought damages and it was difficult to identify what damages might flow from the stay.

His Honour did not think that he needed to order a stay of 7 days of his orders relating to the removal of references to Australia from www.affinage.com. That stay had been sought out of an abundance of caution and IHC UK was generally trying to comply with the orders so it appeared a breach, if any, would have been inadvertent.

International Hair Cosmetics Group Pty Ltd v International Hair Cosmetics Limited (No 2) [2011] FCA 540

For the orders under appeal, see International Hair Cosmetics Group Pty Ltd v International Hair Cosmetics Limited [2011] FCA 339