This is a shorter version of a report to members in May 2011 which began:
"The 4-year campaign to suppress BAFF by "The Combined Armed Forces Federation UK" (CAFF UK / CAFFUK) pre-1975 leavers 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..."
It was about a trademark dispute which CAFFUK had created by the following threats of infringement proceedings, which they sent to BAFF at Christmas 2007, and published on CAFFUK's two public websites:
"The Title, Letterhead, Logo and Trade Mark of The Combined Armed Forces Federation UK (CAFF UK) is registered for copyright protection with the UK Intellectual Property Office.
You are required by The Combined Armed Forces Federation UK to immediately remove the title, letterhead, logo and trade mark of BAFF (2006) Ltd from the entire public domain including its website and Company House registration.
Any failure to comply with the above requirement and inform those to whom it may concern immediately, will be regarded as a continued act of piracy and an injunction will be applied for to prevent any further breach of copyright. A claim for costs and exemplary damages will also be made."
But we quickly found that CAFFUK hadn't truly 'registered' any trademark with the UK Intellectual Property Office.
A CAFFUK representative had in fact applied for trademark registration (not 'copyright protection') of its 'Union Jack and crown' logo. The proposed trademark had been published by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) for possible objection, and was still open for objection.
Even if the CAFFUK trademark had been registered, CAFF had no grounds of legal action against BAFF, because we had neither copied their trademark, nor were we pretending to be them. BAFF had actually offered support for their pre-1975 pension campaign (but only if they wanted), and had referred to CAFFUK the only membership enquiry BAFF ever received about that pension grievance,
So the published pseudo-legal threats had multiple problems, with no basis in actual law. But, as a new organisation at the time, BAFF couldn't expect our target membership of serving personnel and veterans necessarily to know that.
We invited CAFFUK to undertake not to repeat the threats, but as they didn't, it was decided to oppose the trademark application. We also had to continue defensively monitoring the CAFFUK websites.
After two rounds of evidence and a hearing, the trademark dispute decision was in BAFF's favour but the CAFFUK representative decided to appeal, almost certainly against expensive legal advice funded from CAFF veterans' subscriptions.
After another hearing the appeal was also unsuccessful, so trademark registration of the CAFFUK logo was refused.
Having been responsible for the original 'exemplary damages' threats and having been aware of the trademark dispute throughout, the CAFFUK committee then informed us that the legally-enforceable costs awarded against their declared representative were no concern of theirs.
Their representative also refused to pay, and finally made two attempts through the courts to block recovery of the debt. He was again unsuccessful, and the awarded costs were recovered in full by enforcement action, along with the additional court and enforcement costs.
References and notes
The dispute is also mentioned in:
External link: Trade mark victory for the Queen [NB: relevant trademark law has changed since our case.]
While the time and attention demanded by this prolonged saga did cause damage as intended, our volunteers' best efforts continued throughout. See for example BAFF in the news (2008-2010), which covers a period in the middle of the dispute.