Case No. IP-2021-000046

124.The application date of D1’s 2015 Trade Marks is 18 June 2015, but C accepts that D1 commenced actionable use of the ICE sign and D1’s ICE logo before this date. The Defendants submit that the relevant date is June 2013 when it says ICE Group’s machines were first being marketed, imported and sold in the UK under these marks, when WCS was ICE Group’s UK distributor. C submits that there is very limited evidence of use in 2013 and submits that use appears to have commenced properly in June 2014, although it says such use was not significant. 125.I have seen purchase orders and invoices showing that WCS ordered ICE Group machines from July and August 2013 onwards, and there is evidence that WCS sold 30 units of ICE Group machines in 2013 and 135 units in 2014. However, there is no evidence before me about how those specific units were branded: whether they were sold with D1’s ICE Sign or D1’s ICE Logo intact, or overstickered as WCS. I remind myself that Mr Elmore emailed the ICE Group in October 2014 raising concerns about C’s ICE Sign and saying that he had marketed the ICE Group products by reference to International Cleaning Equipment. Mr Killi says Killis bought ICE Group machines from WCS which were not overstickered, and bore ICE Group branding, but the first such purchase appears to be in 2014. 126.The first evidence of the promotion of ICE Group machines on the WCS website is June 2014, the first posts on WCS’s Facebook and twitter feeds which could be said to promote ICE Group machines by reference to D1’s ICE Logo or D1’s ICE sign are September 2014 and November 2014, and the first WCS sales brochure before me clearly showing ICE Group machines and D1’s ICE Logo dates from 2015. 127.Mr Pang accepts that he does not have any knowledge of WCS’s promotional activities or sales in the UK during this time period and accepted, when it was put to him in cross-examination, that there was very little exposure of the ICE Group brand through marketing to the UK by WCS at all. Of course, there was the WCS website. 128.C has argued its case using June 2013 as the relevant date for the purposes of the trial without making an admission as to that date. In the absence of any evidence of offer or sales of ICE Group machines under the ICE sign or D1’s ICE Logo before they appeared on the WCS website in June 2014, I find that June 2014 is the relevant date.