Lush, a cosmetics company that earlier "won a high court battle against Amazon over its use of the word 'lush' to sell rival cosmetics," has trademarked "Christopher North" as the brand name for a new range of toiletries, the Guardian reported, adding that the company "has already now created a new shower gel and named it after their arch-rival, with the tagline 'rich, thick and full of it.' " North is managing director of Amazon.co.uk.
Judge John Baldwin recently ruled that the "right of the public to access technological development does not go so far as to allow a trader such as Amazon to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights, to treat trademarks such as Lush as no more than a generic indication of a class of goods in which the consumer might have an interest." (The Guardian noted that "Amazon shoppers searching for Lush products would instead be directed to similar products described as 'lush.' ")
Mark and Mo Constantine founded Lush in 1995 with one shop in Poole. The retail chain does not sell its products on Amazon, and took the online retailer to court after it ignored attempts to resolve the dispute amicably. "We asked them 17 times before we went to court," Constantine said. "After a while you realize you're being bullied."
Constantine trademarked North's name to "make a point about how upsetting it is to have something personal to you, used by someone else." What began as a joke escalated into a full-blown marketing scheme "after Amazon refused to concede it was doing anything wrong and vowed to appeal against the High Court ruling," the Guardian wrote, noting that Constantine decided he was not going to put up with Amazon's 'bullying unpleasantness' anymore."
"How are they going to behave, are they going to do the right thing, or continue to be naughty?" he said. "If this was a normal business relationship it would have been a joke between us. But this is Amazon, how will they behave?... We are going to keep this on the table and wait and see. If you're not going to behave in a way that's appropriate, there should be some comeback."