however, their beer had been regularly supplied in the UK to US diplomatic and military personnel through US embassy and PX outlets. At the end of 1973, the defendants began a successful export business in the Czech beer to the UK. There was considerable evidence that as a result the public had become confused about the source of ‘Budweiser’ beer in the UK. The plaintiffs sued for passing off. In the Court of Appeal Oliver LJ decided:

doi:10.4324/9781843142928-148

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however, their beer had been regularly supplied in the UK to US diplomatic and military personnel through US embassy and PX outlets. At the end of 1973, the defendants began a successful export business in the Czech beer to the UK. There was considerable evidence that as a result the public had become confused about the source of ‘Budweiser’ beer in the UK. The plaintiffs sued for passing off. In the Court of Appeal Oliver LJ decided:

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ABSTRACT

The critical question ... is what was the position when the defendants first entered the English market with their Budweiser beer in 1973/4? The learned judge’s own findings establish that the plaintiffs already had by then a reputation with a substantial number of people in this country, but he regarded the plaintiffs as not themselves being in the market, and he attributed no significance to any goodwill attached to the sales of the plaintiffs’ beer through the PX as a property which might be affected by the defendants’ activities and which the plaintiffs might be entitled to protect. In this, Mr Kentridge submits, he was wrong, and it is the significance to be attached to these sales which forms the real bone of contention between the parties and which is, to my mind, the only really substantial point in the case. The question, in its simplest form, may be expressed thus: how far is it an essential ingredient of a successful claim in passing off that the plaintiff should have established in this country a business in which his goods or services are sold to the general public on the open market?