07/04/2010 Multimate yields to IKEA

Home products retailer Multimate has been ordered to redesign its logo and house style following infringement of its rival IKEA’s trademark rights. The ruling was issued on 26 January by the Court of Appeal in The Hague in response to an appeal lodged by IKEA.

Appeal
In August 2006 the district court initially rejected IKEA’s claim on the grounds that there was no risk of confusing the two logos due to the fact that they specifically featured the words IKEA and Multimate respectively. However, three years later the Court of Appeal appears to think otherwise.

Well known trademark
The revised judgement concludes that IKEA’s logo is a well known trademark. Moreover, this applies not just to the logo with the words IKEA, but also without. IKEA has registered the logo without the word IKEA as a separate trademark.

Linked
The Court concluded that there was consequently a risk of the public confusing the two trademarks or at least thinking that Multimate was linked to IKEA. This constituted a trademark infringement. Multimate was therefore given six months to come up with a new device mark.