Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Kitchen maker use stupid defence line, rescued by judge

The register registers the following item:
A Manchester kitchen company "Moben" was accused of misleading their consumers by placing an umlaut over the 'o', thus giving the impression that they are a German company, which is grasped by British consumers as a seal of quality.

Moben's defense was, and I quote, "the dots are an artistic device and that any resemblance with an umlaut is coincidental".

However, instead of throwing them out of court and holding them in contempt, the court decided that "using a German-sounding name did not imply that Moben or its products were German" and that "umlauts are used in countries other than Germany ... and that viewers would recognise that a company's trademark would not necessarily relate directly to the origin of that company or its products". Nice, but did you notice that the decision had absolutely no reference to Moben's actual claims? Wonders will never cease.

2 Comments:

At 04 May, 2006 10:07, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Let's see.. One party made a claim in court. The party against whom the claim was made argued against it. A judge heard both arguments and then formed HIS OWN OPINION on the ORIGINAL CLAIM and then ruled on the ORIGINAL CLAIM. Just like he was supposed to. And you see to have a problem with that.
A judge isn't there just to choose the lesser of two evils. The fact that the 2nd party had a bad argument does not automatically make the original claim true, or even reasonable. A judge is there to rule on the original claim, and that's what this judge did (based on your telling of it). Now if the ruling had made no reference to the original claim, then you'd have a point. But the ruling is clearly a direct reply to the original claim.

 
At 04 May, 2006 10:31, Blogger Erez said...

I have no problem with the Judge's call. If the court thinks the logo is not misdirecting, that's fine by me. I also don't think that the entire case was those 4 reported sentences, and that a longer debate took place. My point wasn't that "defence made bad argument, therefore prosecution should've won". This isn't football. But, the defence making such a complete idiocy of a claim isn't Cricket either.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home

eXTReMe Tracker