[2025] EWHC 1722 (IPEC)

It was common ground that the relevant date for assessment of trade mark infringement is the date when the Defendants commenced the acts complained of, and if a Defendant materially changes his manner of use of the impugned sign at a later date, a new global assessment must be made as at that date: Match Group LLC v Muzmatch Ltd [2023] EWCA Civ 454 at [94]. The Defendant started trading under the name Wise in about March 2020. The Claimant sought to persuade me that the evidence showed that there had been no use of the Defendants’ Signs in relation to payroll or payment services until a rather later date, either when the Defendants’ app was launched in April 2021, or when further functionality was added to the app (as plainly it was) in early 2022. I consider the scope of the Defendants’ business under the Signs below, but in terms of setting the relevant date for infringement it is clear from the Defendants’ website pages from April 2020 that from the outset they offered “payroll management” (a service which the Claimant alleges is identical to parts of its specifications).

The Claimant suggested that there had been a significant change in the Defendants’ business in April 2021, when it launched its app. It said that the Defendants had “changed lane” into the “path of the juggernaut,” and started offering payment services at that stage, if not, indeed, when the app was improved in 2022. I do not accept the Claimant’s description of the position. There was little evidence as to when the Defendants started to refer to offering payment services as well as payroll services. However, payment was mentioned in a webpage from as early as May 2020 (“the service is end-to-end from recruitment to payments”), and in the Linked-In page for Dan Richards, the Fourth Defendant, said to be from June 2020 (“Wise provides market-leading software for onboarding, payments & Compliance”). References to “payment technology” were made from at least April 2021, for instance on a website page from 22 April 2021.

The relevant date is therefore around March/April 2020 for the onboarding services and payroll management. It is less clear what is the right date for payment technology, however it seems on a balance of probabilities to have been May 2020, and at the latest it was April 2021. The amendments to the Defendants’ app in 2022 are in my judgment irrelevant to this point.