High Court hands Fairfax & Favor ‘Regina’ boot win
The England and Wales High Court of Justice has ruled that Scottish department store The House of Bruar infringed designs for a heeled riding boot from English country fashion brand Fairfax & Favor (F&F).
F&F initially sued The House of Bruar for infringing two of its boot designs, the “Heeled Regina” and the “Amira” but Bruar admitted to infringement of the Amira design earlier in proceedings.
In a judgment handed down by the court on March 25, Miss Recorder Amanda Michaels held that two of three Bruar designs infringed F&F’s registered community designs for its Regina boot.
While each design by Bruar included minor alterations from the Regina, Michaels ruled that she had “no hesitation in finding that the defendants’ boots were all copied—and deliberately copied—from F&F’s designs”.
F&F had previously approached Bruar in 2015 asking if the department store would be interested in ordering its boots.
It eventually ordered a variety of F&F designs, including the Regina, but the deal was “short-lived” and no further orders were placed.
However, “copies” of F&F’s designs appeared in later issues of the Bruar catalogue, prompting complaints from F&F. These alleged “copies” were made by rival designer Dakota, which made three versions of the boots with minor alterations.
In between versions of the Dakota boot, Bruar claimed that it would “take further steps to differentiate” from the Heeled Regina. However, it approached the artisan who manufactured the Regina boot for its third design, although Bruar claims it did not know it was the same design company.
Court’s analysis
Firstly, Bruar claimed that it was not F&F who had designed the boot but rather the “artisan producer” Lazo & Duque.
However, Michaels did not agree, claiming that F&F’s founder Felix Favor Parker’s input into the Regina design “was not that of a customer asking for some bespoke alterations to an existing design, but was sufficient that he was the designer”.
She was also unconvinced by Bruar’s denial that first two variants of the boots were “copied” from the Regina design.
Michaels said: “In all the circumstances, I conclude that Bruar wished to sell boots which looked like F&F’s boots, and asked Dakota to copy the Heeled Regina design when making the version 1 and version 2 boots. In my judgment, the denial of copying is incompatible with the documentary evidence.”
When considering the third Bruar boot, Michaels noted that it was “less clear” that it copied the Heeld Regina but “found on balance that this version too was copied”.
Validity questions
The court also discussed whether the Regina boots registered community design (RCD) was valid.
Bruar had argued that there were only “minor differences” between the Regina and existing boot designs and therefore was not worthy of being allowed a registered design.
Michaels said that the design of the boot’s rear panel differentiated enough to find the RCD valid, saying: “I am satisfied that the rear panel is significantly different to what had gone before, and the impact of the vertical strips or elasticated back panel (if so understood) is such that none of the earlier boots would produce the same overall impression on an informed user as the RCD. I, therefore, conclude that the RCD is valid.”
The judgment concluded by ruling that the first two versions of Bruar’s boots did not “produce a different overall impression” from the RCD and held that they infringed.
But for the version 3 boots, the “significant” difference in the rear design of the boot, was found to produce a different overall impression to the RCD and so did not infringe.
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