Case No. EWHC-941-(IPEC)

148.As is apparent from the length of this judgment and from the volume of evidence and other material before the court, this case was not the simple or straightforward case that the parties suggested. I do not mean this as a criticism of the quality of the parties’ advocacy or trial preparation (which were very high). However, I do not think that the case was suitable to be heard as a two day trial in the IPEC. In particular, with counsel being limited to a half day each for their oral submissions, I have been very reliant on their written submissions and did not have the benefit of hearing full oral submissions on various matters of factual or legal difficulty. This inevitably made writing this judgment a far lengthier and more difficult task. 149.In my view, if the parties wished this case to be heard as a two day trial in the IPEC, they should have attempted to narrow the issues in the lead up to the CMC and, if that was not possible or if the scale of the issues only later became apparent, one or both of them should have sought to have the case transferred into the main High Court list to allow for it to have a longer trial. In this regard, from the evidence before me, it does not seem that this was the sort of case where either party needed the special IPEC procedures and, in particular, its cost capping rules, to help them obtain access to justice. Both appear to have fought this case as if it was normal High Court litigation.1 Since the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, this mark is now protected in the UK as a comparable trade mark (EU), No.UK00900182253 2 Now protected in the UK as a comparable trade mark (EU), No.UK009162466393 e.g. “1.6 million people in the UK met their partner on Match” or “Hi, I’m your Match coach. How can I help you” 4 Mr Riviere explained (and I accept) that the jump in the awareness figures between 2012 and 2013 was due to the different methodology used by IPSOS whereby respondents who indicated that they were certain that they would not use on-line dating were removed from the sample.5 The 2010 advertisement was for Match Affinity and included the words “If you’re looking to start a lasting relationship, our free affinity test can help you find someone on your wave length. So take your first step now at Matchaffinity.com a different kind of relationship service from Match”. The other 8 (post 2011) advertisements were part of the so-called “Real Members” TV campaign and featured real users of Match telling their own dating story in their own words and referring to the Claimants as “Match”. 6 The website was free to access but users had to pay a small fee to unblur the photographs of potential partners or to be able to contact a potential partner. 7 Users have to state whether they are “very practising”, “moderately practising”, “practising” or “non-practising” Muslims and whether they “never”, “sometimes”, “usually” or “always” pray.8 The Defence does not refer to the class 9 goods for which the 2017 Match.com Mark is registered, but as these relate to the app software, I assume that it is accepted that these are identical goods.9 i.e. the keywords such as “match-muslim”, “UK-muslim-match” etc.10 Ms Bowhill’s Skeleton referred to Match and Muzmatch having between them searched more than 53.7 million records, using 17 keywords.