News / International
Trunki battles for design rights
Kids’ luggage firm Trunki will this week take its high profile legal battle over design infringement to the Supreme Court. Parent company Magmatic has been locked in legal wranglings with PMS’s over their ‘kiddee case’ – which undercuts the Trunki range – for several years, claiming the design breaches its Europe-wide design registration.
A 2013 ruling in the High Court found that the Kiddee Case breached Trunki’s design rights with its notably similar product, however the decision was later overturned on the grounds of fair competition.
Paul Beverley, managing director of PMS International, commented at the time: “The successful outcome of our appeal is also welcome confirmation that design registrations cannot be used to stop unpatented design concepts from facing fair competition from products that simply look quite different.
“If this were not the case, Hoover would be the only vacuum cleaner on the market and Apple would be the only tablet”.
Trunki argues that the overturned ruling impacts the design community and has the potential to undermine the design rights of more than 350,000 British businesses, leaving designers “vulnerable to flagrant design infringement”. It has launched a #ProtectYourDesign campaign calling on trade bodies and authorities to support its fight against rip-offs, so far claiming Sir Terence Conran, Kevin McCloud, Will Butler-Adams, Adam Balon and ACID’s Dids Macdonald as backers.
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