Uni Excellence is a business helping aspiring lawyers and doctors choose the best law and medical schools. It owns the trade marks ‘UniLaw’ and ‘UniMed’, which it registered in March 2019.
The University of Law, which own the trade marks ‘ULaw’ and ‘University of Law’ filed an opposition with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), on the grounds the marks were too similar―bringing it into opposition with its own former student, Virginia Szepietowski, a co-founder of Uni Excellence who, ironically, helped promote the University of Law to her clients.
However, the IPO found there was ‘simply not enough similarity between the applicant’s UniLaw marks and the sign University of Law for there to be misrepresentation and/or deception’.
Its judgment stated: ‘The opponent is seeking to unfairly monopolise the words “university”, and any abbreviation of that work, and the word “law”.’ It ordered the University to pay Uni Excellence £2,700 in costs.
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