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Rocky time for Rockwool

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

Building solutions manufacturer Kingspan Group plc has just won a trade mark and advertising dispute against Rockwool Limited. According to a press release from Wragge & Co., who acted for the victorious company, Mr Justice Kitchin, in the Chancery Division of the High Court (England and Wales) found that a series of Rockwool demonstrations and video recordings, which compared the fire performance of Kingspan and Rockwool products, was misleading and failed to comply with the Misleading and Comparative Advertising Directive. The judge also ruled that Rockwool took unfair advantage of Kingspan's trade marks, causing damage to its reputation, but dismissed Kingspan's malicious falsehood claim.

The judgment, [2011] EWHC 250 (Ch), has been posted on BAILII here and the IPKat hasn't yet had the chance to read it (it's 251 paragraphs in length), The Kat will revert to this case when the opportunity occurs -- though a swift glance suggests that most of the judgment consists of a painstaking analysis of the facts, but not too much legal argument.

Rockwool here
Stone sheep here
Kingspan here
Kingspeech here
Kingspeach here

Full post as published by IPKat on February 21, 2011 (boomark / email).