Claim No: IP-2022-000053 - [2025] EWHC 1827 (IPEC)

Having found goodwill and a misrepresentation in relation to the First Label, in my judgment, damage would necessarily follow from that misrepresentation. That is sufficient for present purposes. However, counsel for the Claimants asked me to decide separately on each of the three alleged heads of damage claimed by the Claimants:

Ms Martin’s endorsement business was of prominent products with established marketplace reputation, and she gave evidence of her process in deciding which endorsements to accept and which to reject. As I have said, I accept that evidence. I also accept that, had she been asked, Ms Martin would have been unlikely to endorse the Products, which, on the evidence before me, were not prominent in the wine market nor of any extensive marketplace reputation. Endorsing the Products would therefore have been at odds with her goodwill, and the products which she was known for endorsing. I do not at this stage need to quantify it, but I find that the first head of damage is made out.

I do not accept that, were she to be (wrongly) thought to have endorsed the First Label Products, it is less likely that a third-party high-end wine provider would request her services. This submission was undermined by Ms Martin’s invitation to participate in the Golden Vine awards in 2021, well after the First Label had been made available in the United Kingdom. Ms Martin gave evidence that she was asked to be Artistic Director of the “prestigious” Golden Vines awards, which celebrate wine producers who deliver exceptional quality. She created the trophy, and hosted the awards in 2021, including auctioning a live drawing at the awards ceremony held at Annabel’s Private Members Club in London. There was no evidence that the convenors of the Golden Vine awards were concerned by the First Label Products. This may have been because the First Label Products were imported into the United Kingdom in only very small quantities, a matter to which I return below, and the fact that the advertising of the First Label Products was described as “minimal” by Mr Patch. This real-world example also undermines Mr Duff’s evidence on this point, which was based on supposition, and his opinion. Mr Duff said “[i]f I had seen [Ms Martin’s] work on a bottle of wine in Asda then I would have been quite shocked”. Mr Duff did not in fact see the Products in Asda, so what he would have done is supposition. Further, no permission was given for Mr Duff to adduce opinion evidence. He was not in any event in the wine or alcohol industry, so his opinion on this topic is not relevant. I do not consider that this head of damage is made out on the facts before me.

The third head of damage is said to be damage to the distinctiveness of Ms Martin’s signature style. This seems to me to be likely on the facts of this case. I am not asked at this stage to quantify what that damage is likely to be (and I return to proportionality and quantum below).

Returning to the List of Issues, in my judgment protectable goodwill subsists in the United Kingdom in Ms Martin’s work (although not in The Style as defined in the Particulars of Claim), including as generated by the endorsement of products sold in the United Kingdom, and that goodwill is owned by Ms Martin, having not been transferred to Found the Found. GM Drinks has misrepresented that the First Label Products are connected in the course of trade with Ms Martin’s business, causing Ms Martin damage to her existing licensing/endorsement business and to the distinctiveness of her signature style.