NOCN v Open College Network Credit4Learning, Intellectual Property Enterprise Court
NOCN held registered trade marks for OCN and a swoosh logo. It claimed that the defendant had infringed its marks and was guilty of passing off. The defendant counterclaimed for revocation on the basis that those marks had been invalidly registered.
The judge at the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ruled that the OCN trade mark should be revoked and no goodwill attached to the term, as it was purely descriptive in that it was used interchangeably with “Open Colledge Network”, in which NOCN did claim rights. However, the swoosh mark had not been registered in bad faith and so was being infringed. The judge issued a damming verdict for both parties, though: he said it was regrettable that two charities had failed to settle earlier and had incurred over £400,000 in costs with their laudable causes of providing adult education suffering as a result.