Case No. EWHC-941-(IPEC)

14.Match provides online dating services. As Mr Riviere’s evidence made clear, its services are principally aimed at people who are looking to find another person with whom they can build a long term relationship (including marriage). This was also apparent from research done for Match by the Isurus Agency in 2011 as well as from the more recent 2018 International Wave research. In this regard, Match differs from other service providers such as Plenty of Fish or, more recently, Tinder, which are more focussed on people who are seeking more casual relationships.15.Because the aim is to connect people who do not know each other, users of dating services have to provide sensitive personal information about themselves and about what they are looking for in a partner. As a result, it is important that users feel that they can trust the platform that they are using (or platforms, because the evidence is that some users use more than one). 16.Match started providing its services in the United States in around 1995, trading via a website at www.match.com. On 1 April 1996, an application was filed to register “match.com” as a trade mark in the UK but Match did not, in fact, launch its website in the UK until 2001. I have been shown a copy of a page from that website from 2001. At the top of this page is the logo shown below, featuring a beating heart image, the “Match” name in large, bold, lower case text, and the characters “.com” printed vertically in much smaller lower case text.Below this logo, the website page has four circles labelled “My Home”, “Search”, “Match” and “Subscribe” which describe the nature of the on-line dating process. The page, therefore, shows how the word “Match” can be used distinctively (as part of the above logo identifying the provider of the services) and also descriptively (to describe a part of those services, the finding of a match or partner).17.In 2003, Match’s UK logo was changed. The beating heart device was dropped. The “match” element retained its large, bold, lower case text but the “.com” element was brought onto the same horizontal plane in a lower case font of the same size but which (unlike the “match” element) was not emboldened. 18.In 2006, the logo was changed again to the form shown below with the “match.com” element being retained as in the 2003 version but with a figurative element added to the right, featuring a caricature of a male and a female (known as “Jack and Jill”) with a small pink love heart above. 19.In 2009, Match’s European operations, including those in the UK, were acquired by Meetic SAS. Shortly before this, in January 2009, Match created a Twitter handle at https://twitter.com/matchuk. This was followed, in December 2009, by a YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/UKmatch and, in March 2010, by a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/matchuk/. In March 2011, a further twitter handle was created at https://twitter.com/matchUK. In each of these addresses, the word “match” was used without the “.com” element. Consistently with this, I have seen a Facebook page for Match with a logo (shown below) which also omitted the “.com” element: 20.In 2010, Match started providing an alternative service in the UK, known as Match Affinity. Mr Austen asserted that this was, in effect, a sub-brand of Match although, as Ms Bowhill stated in closing, that was not part of Match’s pleaded case. However, I note, that Match Affinity used a logo similar to that depicted at paragraph 18 above but with the word “affinity” inserted between the word “match” and the word “.com” in a different colour, as shown below:21.In July 2011, Match launched an app allowing customers to download software for internet-based dating to a mobile phone or device. In the US, from April 2014, the mobile app used the logo set out below and, in 2015, that logo was adopted for Match’s services provided via the app in the UK.22.Finally, on 3 March 2015, Match applied to register the Match Device Mark (shown below) as a trade mark and in that same year adopted that mark as the logo for its website.I have seen pages from Match’s UK website after it adopted the Match Device Mark and, in addition to using the above logo, they use the word “Match” as a brand (i.e. distinctively and by itself).323.The logos shown above are not, for the most part, the same as the Match Marks as registered and are not, therefore, the marks on which Match’s trade mark claims are based. Further, Match’s passing off claim as pleaded does not rely on any alleged misrepresentation made by Muzmatch with regard to these logos per se. However, what this history does show is that, throughout Match’s trading in the UK (including before April or May 2011 when Muzmatch started trading), the branding of Match’s services has generally involved some level of emphasis on the “match” element of the Match Marks. This emphasis has been by way of placement, size, colour, or emboldening of the word “match” or by its being the sole word used to identify Match as the source of the services.