The Times - UK (2022-05-23)

the times | Monday May 23 2022 V3 37

Business

Trademark application disputes have
surged to record levels since Brexit,
according to research by a law firm of
official figures.
The number of oppositions to UK
trademark applications more than
doubled to 8,026 last year, compared
with 3,584 in 2020, Mathys & Squire,
the intellectual property law firm, said.
Britain left the European Union’s
trademark system in January last year,
meaning that any business wishing to
protect a trademark now needs to make
a separate application. Mathys &
Squire said it had led to a “rush” to file
applications and, in turn, a rise in the
number of oppositions being filed.
Recent disputes include McDonald’s
opposition to an application to register
the McVegan trademark in the UK,
which the fast-food chain won, and
Shine TV, the producer of the BBC’s
MasterChef series, successfully oppos-

ing three applications for trademarks

incorporating Master Chef Academy

for education and training services.

There were a record number of

applications, with 195,000 in the year to

October, up 54 per cent on the year

before, official figures showed.

The “significant” increase in trade-

mark applications resulted in a length-

ening backlog at the Intellectual

Property Office, the government

agency that handles them, and the

average examination feedback turn-

around time for customers increased

from five to fifteen days to up to three

months, the office’s annual report

showed. It said it had since returned to

the previous level.

To help to deal with the demand, the

office has appointed 259 new members

of staff, including trademark examin-

ers, patent examiners and IT specialists.

“Reductions to this feedback time are

planned in 2021-22 with the aim to

achieve normal service levels by the

end of the year,” the office said in its last

annual report.

Disputes over trademarks, known as

trademark oppositions, occur when a

business files an application with the

office and another person or business

tries to block it. The office then will

determine whether it should be refused

on the basis of an earlier right or other

grounds, such as bad faith.

Harry Rowe, managing associate at

Mathys & Squire, said: “It is likely that

this is no short-term spike in disputes,

this is what trademark protection in the

UK is now going to look like.

“Brexit has opened up a whole new

battlefield for businesses with valuable

brands to protect. Prior to Brexit, trade-

mark owners could protect their trade-

mark across all the EU member states

in one application. Now that the UK is

no longer covered in an EU trademark,

trademark owners must file two sepa-

rate applications in order to achieve the

same protection.”

Alex Ralph

Brexit increases battles over trademarks

UK sales of Ford Fiesta

2010 103,000

2011 96,000

2012 109,000

2013 121,000

2014 131,000

2015 133,000

2016 120,000

2017 94,000

2018 95,000

2019 77,000

2020 49,000

UK sales and market share for

all Ford models

UK sales Market share

2010 280,000 13.8%

2011 265,000 13.7%

2012 281,000 13.7%

2013 310,000 13.7%

2014 326,000 13.1%

2015 335,00012.7%

2016 318,000 11.8%

2017 287,000 11.3%

2018 254,000 10.7%

2019 236,000 10.2%

2020 152,000 9.3%

2021 116,000 7.0%

2021 27,000

Source: SMMT

Lawyers get

call after

firm’s failure

Alex Ralph

Administrators of the largest listed

construction company to go bust since

Carillion have brought in lawyers to

investigate its collapse.

Joint administrators at Grant

Thornton have instructed Gateley, the

law firm, to help them to look into the

background to NMCN’s failure.

The downfall in October of the

75-year-old group, formerly called

North Midland Construction, has been

contentious. Unsecured creditors are

facing losses of £115 million, share-

holders were wiped out and directors

were awarded more than £9 million in

the two years leading up to its failure.

The Financial Reporting Council, the

accountancy regulator, is investigating

the audit by BDO of NMCN’s 2019

financial statements. Simpson Millar,

another law firm, has been instructed

by 26 former employees to bring an

employment tribunal claim alleging

that NMCN did not consult staff

properly about redundancies. A

hearing at East Midlands employment

tribunal for the protective award claim

is scheduled for next month.

NMCN operated in the construction,

telecoms and water industries and was

based near Sutton-in-Ashfield in

Nottinghamshire. It employed 1,789

staff, operated a dozen UK offices and

four manufacturing sites and had a

premium listing on the London Stock

Exchange. It made revenue of £405 mil-

lion in 2019.

It was brought down by souring

contracts and the discovery of deep

losses. Joint administrators at Grant

Thornton were appointed after prob-

lems in the company’s building busi-

ness and lossmaking water contracts

led to expected losses spiralling to

£43 million, a restatement of its 2019 ac-

counts and repeated delays to the publi-

cation of its 2020 report and accounts.

Grant Thornton has sold off the

company’s core units in pre-pack deals,

which preserved 1,642 jobs. More than

3,000 unsecured creditors are not

expected to retrieve any money, the

administrator said in a report filed at

Companies House this month. Grant

Thornton filed its statutory report

about the conduct of the directors to

the government within three months of

its appointment.

Grant Thornton and Gateley

declined to comment.

production of a compact ver-
sion of the Mach-E. Neither is in the
same segment as the Fiesta. Instead, it
appears that the company is looking at
Ford Focus-sized electric cars, which
may indicate that the Focus could be
going the same way as the Escort and
Cortina. The immediate death of the
Fiesta may be exaggerated, though. “Fi-
esta very much remains on sale,” a Ford
spokesman said. “Production, supply
and lead times do continue to be
affected by the global semiconductor
shortage. We are working on how to
maximise production, building every
vehicle for our customers with the
quality they expect.”
The fact that there has been a facelift
of higher-end Fiesta variants over the
past year suggests that the model will be

around for a little longer,

populating the bridge to 2030,

when sales of cars powered by conven-

tional internal combustion engines are

banned in the UK and elsewhere.

If there is no electric replacement by

Ford of the Fiesta, then that is not

simply a case for the millions of British

households that have owned one to get

all misty-eyed.

It also would be an intriguing state-

ment that the giant America auto com-

pany does not want to play at the

bottom end of a market that could be

sewn up by the South Koreans, Japa-

nese and increasingly Chinese and

would mark a departure from the time

of Model T onwards when Ford’s raison

d’etre has been to produce cars that

people can afford.

The government’s finances for the

year to April, which are due to be

published tomorrow, will be plagued

by high rates of inflation, which

pushes up the cost of interest

payments on government debt.

Debt interest payments rose by

£30.5 billion to a record £69.9 billion

in the year to March, offsetting a

£50.3 billion drop in government

spending to £893.3 billion over the

year. Tax receipts rose by

£94.3 billion to £619.9 billion, lifting

total government receipts to

£830 billion, a rise of £105.3 billion.

Public sector net borrowing shrank

to £151.8 billion, or about 6.4 per

cent of gross domestic product, less

than half the figure borrowed over

the 12 months to March last year.

The Office for Budget

Responsibility expects a further rise

in debt payments to £83 billion this

year. The forecast increase is largely

because of a rise in the retail prices

index, which determines payouts on

index-linked gilts. The retail prices

index, which reached 9 per cent in

March, has now entered double

digits, rising by 11.1 per cent last

month.

Analysts expect there to be

upward pressure on borrowing from

the cost of tax cuts and government

support for households with energy

and fuel bills. High levels of income

from tax receipts are likely to fall as

growth slows and inflation and

interest rates continue to rise.

The sharp increase in the cost of

living is being felt by shoppers

Investors in Shaftesbury are likely

to be looking for more details on its

mooted merger with Capital &

Counties when the West End

landlord unveils half-year results.

Aside from that, the market will be

keen to get a handle on whether

the recovery in rents and a

reduction in the vacancy rate have

continued. Shaftesbury has already

reported a like-for-like increase of

7.5 per cent in the value of its

estate over the six months to

March, an acceleration on the

5.2 per cent improvement recorded

during the previous six-month

period.

Interims Avon Protection,

Greencore, Hyve, On The Beach,

Shaftesbury, SSP, Topps Tiles

Finals Bytes Technology, Cordiant

Digital Infrastructure Limited,

Cranswick, Helical, Homeserve,

Likewise, Lords Group Trading,

Renewi, RS Group, Speedy Hire,

Trinity, Exploration & Production

Trading updates Hill & Smith

Holdings, Hilton Food

Steve Rowe will deliver his

swansong when he checks out of

Marks & Spencer, the business he

has grown up in. After joining as a

15-year-old Saturday boy, Rowe,

right, now 54, is leaving on a high

note having steered the high street

stalwart through the

pandemic and taking

many of the brutal

decisions on store

and staff numbers

that had long been

overdue.

The City expects

M&S to report

annual adjusted

pre-tax profits of

£522 million, more

than ten times greater

than last year’s outcome.

Consensus is for M&S to unveil

a 46.6 per cent rise in clothing sales

compared with last year, when it

was hit by coronavirus restrictions,

while improved ranges have lifted

its sales 0.5 per cent higher than

pre-pandemic levels. The food

business is forecast to have grown

sales by 10.3 per cent in the past

year. Investors will have to wait for

Rowe’s successors, Stuart Machin

and Katie Bickerstaffe, to

update on how they plan

to lead the retail

business through the

present cost-of-living

crisis.

Interims Hollywood

Bowl

Finals Braemar

Shipping Services,

De La Rue, HICL

Infrastructure, Marks

& Spencer, Mediclinic

International, Pennant

International, Pets At Home,

SevernTrent, SSE

Trading updates Intertek, Regional

REIT, Sabre Insurance

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Shareholders in A J Bell will be

looking for details on how the

downturn in share markets is

affecting the investment platform,

which reports results for the six

months to March. In April it warned

that its net inflows in the March

quarter were down from £1.8 billion

last time to £1.6 billion, although

customer numbers were up by

another 20,000 to 403,000.

The new chief executive of

Johnson Matthey will have much to

say about their company’s future.

After ditching plans to build

high-performance batteries for cars,

a new strategy from Liam Condon

will be the focus. Takeover talk

pushed shares in the company up by

about a fifth last month, after it

emerged that Standard Industries, a

private American conglomerate, had

taken a 5.2 per cent stake.

Interims AJ Bell, Integrafin

Holdings

Finals Auto Trader, Caledonia

Investments, Intermediate Capital,

Johnson Matthey, LondonMetric

Property, PayPoint, Picton Property

Income, Ted Baker, United Utilities

Trading updates S&U, Wickes

friday

Finals HarbourVest Global Private

Equity, Volvere

The week ahead

tomorrow

wednesday

thursday