Protecting Goodwill in a Digital World: Lessons from a Travel IP Dispute
How Would You Feel If a Competitor Hijacked 40 Years of Your Brand?
You spend decades building a respected brand: providing a high-quality service, investing heavily in marketing, refining customer experience, and earning thousands of positive reviews. Then, almost overnight, a competitor rebrands itself using your name and leverages modern digital marketing techniques to divert your traffic, confuse your customers, and piggy-back off your reputation.
Unfortunately, that was exactly the situation one of our travel clients found themselves in. Below, Conor Askins shares a recent case study involving a combined trade mark infringement and passing off dispute handled by Conor and Stephen Mason (Senior Counsel) at Travlaw.
Background
Due to the terms of a settlement agreement (spoiler alert), we cannot name the travel companies involved in the dispute – so let’s call them:
(A) Party A (our client) - a top 30 ATOL holder that has been a market leader offering flights and package holidays to UK holidaymakers since the 1980s. Party A had a Trust Pilot score of ‘5.0 excellent’ and prided itself on its strong customer service. Party A had a registered trade mark granting them the sole use of access for their name.
(B) Party B - a US based OTA that sells a mixture of flights and accommodation but their primary focus was on selling accommodation bookings. Party B had two Trust Pilot sites with the primary site showing ‘3.8 excellent’ and their secondary site showing ‘1.6 bad’.
The 2022 Marketing Campaign That Triggered the Dispute
In 2022, Party B launched a major rebrand. For simplicity, imagine Party B simply changed its trading name to Party A. Alongside the rebrand, they deployed two powerful digital marketing techniques:
(i) SEO (Search Engine Optimisation i.e. rebranding their website to ensure that their website appeared at the top of Google searches when ‘Party A’ was searched into Google Search), also known as ‘organic marketing’. Party B’s website included various references to the name ‘Party A’ on their website and they also entered ‘Party A’ into their code to further bolster their position on Google Search.
(ii) SEM (Search Engine Marketing i.e. paying a search engine, like Google, to display ‘sponsored’ advertisements when ‘Party A’ is searched into Google Search), also known as Pay-Per-click (PPC) marketing. I am sure you have all seen sponsored ads on Google when you have carried out a Google search but, for those that haven’t, the sponsored ads appear above all the other search returns.
For a business with 40 years of reputation behind it, you might expect limited impact. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Unfortunately, this had a huge impact on our client – I have set out just some of the immediate consequences below:
Loss of search ranking: Party B’s PPC ads began appearing above Party A’s organic listing.
Customer confusion: Customers were calling our client to ask for assistance with their bookings placed with Party B. For example, one such call was from a customer who had placed a hotel booking with Party B but had arrived at their hotel in Paris and found the hotel had no record of their booking.
Bank confusion: Even some card issuers redirected consumers to Party A because the booking documents contained the same name.
Negative reviews wrongly attributed: Our client had a high volume of new negative reviews on their Trust Pilot website following bookings that were placed with Party B, not our client.
Reputational damage on social media: Complaints publicly naming Party A, despite Party A having nothing to do with the booking
And then there’s the unquantifiable but very real damage: the lost bookings and lost long‑term customers who wrongly attributed poor experiences to Party A. So, what did we do to help?
High Court Claim & Settlement
We tried to negotiate with Party B to resolve the issues amicably, i.e. ‘please stop marketing yourselves as our client and spending excessive sums of money doing that or we will be forced to pursue litigation’. Party B, however, took an aggressive stance and denied any wrong doing. Litigation it is then…
We issued a claim in the designated High Court for intellectual property law claims. The claim was brought under two limbs:
Registered Trade Mark - Our client alleged that Party B had infringed our client’s registered trade mark rights. Due to the unauthorised use of our client’s trade mark by Party B this resulted in a likelihood in confusion on the part of the public.
Passing Off - Our client alleged that due to their reputation and history, they had built up a substantial amount of goodwill under their name which qualified them for the common law protection of passing off. Party B’s use of Party A’s name amounted to a misrepresentation which had caused damage to our client.
Our client sought an injunction to stop Party B from carrying on business in the UK under Party A’s name and to stop their digital marketing campaign, as well as damages and other remedies.
Party B continued to deny any breach of our client’s registered trade mark or that they had been passing off as Party A. The litigation was hard-fought and after preparing eight 500-page bundles with the final hearing due to take place in 1 week (don’t ask our administrator about this case…), the parties eventually reached a settlement. While we cannot disclose the precise terms of the settlement, we can say that they were very favourable for our client. Party B are no longer able to pay for PPC marketing with Google (and other search engine providers), they have had to remove the references to ‘Party A’ in their code and on their website to limit the use of their SEO marketing, and they agreed to pay a substantial sum of damages to our client for the trouble caused! We also inserted a Dispute Resolution Mechanism for the parties should there be further issues in the future which has already proved worthwhile…
Conclusion
Cases like this demonstrate why protecting your brand — legally and technically — is essential. Whether you’re a travel operator or a tech‑driven business, your name, your digital footprint, and your reputation are often your most valuable commercial assets.
When others attempt to divert your hard‑earned custom or pass themselves off as you, the law offers powerful remedies — and we are here to help enforce them.
If you believe a competitor may be:
· infringing your trade mark,
· using your name in digital advertising,
· diverting traffic through SEO/PPC manipulation, or
· passing off their services as yours,
emailinfo@techlaw.co.ukand let’s have a chat!