The Company Names Tribunal was introduced by the Companies Act (2006) to deal with disputes concerning opportunistic company name registrations. It started operating on 1 October 2008. Under Section 69 of the 2006 Act:
(1) A person ( “the applicant”) may object to a company's registered name on the ground-(a) that it is the same as a name associated with the applicant in which he has had goodwill, or(b) that it is sufficiently similar to such a name that its use in the United Kingdom would be likely to mislead by suggesting a connection between the company and the applicant.
The Tribunal's decisions will be published here. The first decision has been published: see here. It concerned the registration, in February 2008, of the company name Coke Cola Limited. The applicants - The Coca-Cola Company - were, unsurprisingly, successful in their application under Section 69(1)(b) and a change of name order under Section 73 was made by the company names adjudicator. Further information about the Tribunal's remit is available here.
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