Haseltine Lake Kempner

Firm overview:

Kellogg, Birds Eye, Farrow & Ball and Wagamama are just a few of the household names that entrust HLK with their trademark matters. Clients are drawn to the reputation of HLK’s lawyers and blend of technical and IP legal expertise, with lawyers, patent and trademark attorneys collaborating to provide a comprehensive service. HLK supports clients through all stages of IP rights, from clearance searches to registration and litigation, and has a growing non-contentious offering.

The team is well known for its handling of trademark disputes, filing and defending trademark oppositions and cancellations before the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) and EU Intellectual Property Office. HLK acted for Tesco in the highly publicised dispute with Lidl over its ‘Clubcard Prices’ sign.

In January 2025 HLK held its inaugural trademark conference, a free of charge event that brought together in-house IP professionals to address pressing topics that matter to their teams.

Team overview:

Jason Dainty co-leads the firm’s Trademarks team and leads on or has won many of the firm’s important clients including Wren Kitchens, Callaway Golf, Kurt Geiger, Mamas & Papas, Ecotricity and more. Dainty is renowned amongst his colleagues for showing remarkable leadership at a relatively young age and was legacy firm Kempner & Partners’ managing partner from the age of 34.

Chris Morris leads the team alongside Dainty and has over 20 years’ experience providing advice to industry-leading clients across a broad range of sectors. He currently leads the trademark prosecution work for some of the firm’s biggest trademark clients including Tesco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Kellogg.

Another key client contact, Amanda Mallon represents clients before the UKIPO and her work includes managing the trademark portfolio for Nomad Foods, which covers brands such as Birds Eye, GoodFella’s and Aunt Bessie’s.

Key matters:

Non-Contentious:

• Clearance, strategy and advisory work for Nomad Foods

For UK or EU-related IP issues, HLK continues to manage all IP matters for Nomad Foods, often liaising directly with the individual businesses within the Nomad Foods Group, conducting clearance searches for new local brands in the UK and Europe, securing registered protection and providing protection strategy advice.

Amanda Mallon manages the relationship and is in charge of all trademark and design portfolio work. Jason Dainty manages any IP dispute cases.

• Global trademark and design portfolio management for Team 17 Group

This year the firm was instructed to take over the global trademark and design portfolios for Team 17 Group, a well-known computer game company, whose most renowned game is Worms.  The client recently acquired a number of companies and wanted an IP specialist firm to consolidate the separate portfolios from the various companies and strategically manage them together.

Contentious:

• Lidl v Tesco

In March 2024, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales handed down its judgment in Tesco’s appeal against a UK High Court judgment, handed down in April 2023 in favour of Lidl. In that ruling, the court determined that Tesco’s Clubcard Promotion signs infringed Lidl’s trademarks and amounted to passing off, and that the signs had been copied from the Lidl logo, thereby also infringing Lidl’s copyright.

The Court of Appeal upheld Tesco’s appeal that it had not infringed Lidl’s copyright but with some notable reluctance, dismissed the appeal with regards to trademark infringement and passing off.

Richard Kempner, Brian Whitehead, Jamie Rowlands are on the HLK team for Tesco.

• B&Q v Wren Kitchens (Litigation in the High Court)

This is a High Court trademark infringement matter relating to the parties’ comparative advertising, where each compares against the market and each other. It is believed to be the only comparative advertising case in the High Court at the moment. There is a counter claim where Wren claims that B&Q has also infringed its trademarks.

The matter is ongoing. Trial was supposed to take place in November 2024, but was vacated as the parties are amending their pleadings.

Jason Dainty leads the team.

Clients:

Tesco, Farrow & Ball, Nomad Group (BirdsEye, Findus, Goodfellas etc), Wren Kitchens, Team 17, Tessl