The Intellectual Property Office has held that the trade mark ‘The Willow Tea Rooms’ belongs to the business which previously operated a cafe on the building not the new trust which has come into restore the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building. The previous operator now runs the ‘Willow Tea Rooms’ from a different location.
This may have implications for other heritage buildings with famous trading names. Paragraph 119 of the IPO decision states that:
‘There is no automatic right to a mark as a result of heritage-related connections. Trade marks are commercial communication tools which are bought and sold and which may, or may not, belong to the entities which originally used them. The applicant now owns the building itself, in order to preserve the heritage of Mackintosh. However, even if the building itself was known as The Willow Tea Rooms at some point in the distant past, that does not give the applicant a right, as Ms Mulhern puts it, to hijack the mark of a business that has been operating successfully under that mark for over 30 years.’