In May 2011 it was reported to members that "The 4-year campaign to suppress BAFF by 'The Combined Armed Forces Federation UK' [CAFFUK] ... has finally been seen off, after a series of rulings in BAFF's favour. This tedious 'People's Front of Judea' saga is therefore at an end..."
The attempt to suppress BAFF* followed our sincere offer to support CAFFUK's pre-1975 forces pension campaign (but only if they wanted).
* Note: direct and indirect references in this article to 'BAFF' relate to the former BAFF (2006) Ltd, but are retained here for archival purposes.
CAFFUK responded by sending and publishing threats of legal action seeking 'exemplary damages' if BAFF didn't close down immediately and completely, on the basis of a trademark which CAFF claimed (inaccurately) to have registered.
We knew that the pseudo-legal claims published on both CAFFUK websites had multiple problems in actual law, the problem being that we couldn't expect our core target membership necessarily to know that.
That led to an unnecessarily prolonged trademark dispute which the CAFFUK side lost at every stage, finally failing in a Court action to avoid payment of the lawfully awarded expenses. Separate attempts to cancel BAFF's company registration and trademark registration both failed at the first hurdle.
The dispute was essentially one-sided, in that CAFFUK, while not noticeably involved in issues other than their pre-1975 pension grievance, claimed a monopoly to recruit and represent current serving 'other ranks' and 'other rank' veterans.
Apparently confused by BAFF's accurate self-description as a would-be "staff association", CAFFUK suggested that BAFF confine itself to representing "staff officers" or "senior officers". It made no difference that we supplied the CAFF correspondent with the ranks or former ranks of our executive council members (basically all ranks between full Cpl and Lt Col or equivalent, with all three services and the reserves represented).
BAFF, on the other hand, had no problem with CAFFUK representing whoever chose to join them.
Whereas CAFFUK had made a determined attempt to suppress and terminate BAFF, BAFF's successful technical opposition to CAFFUK's trademark application was not intended to affect any legitimate CAFFUK activity, including continued use of their title and logo.
We told CAFF during the dispute that there was (of course) no question of our attempting to use our own genuinely-registered trademark in a similar manner against them.
It cannot be emphasized enough that the pointlessly-prolonged dispute was very much unwanted by BAFF.
This replaces a fuller report which has now been retired. The dispute is also mentioned in this article: Pre-1975 service pensions.