Tal Children’s furniture LTD supplied their baby changing table to Shilav, Israel’s leading chain of baby furniture, clothes and accessories.
In the course of time, Shilav found a supplier, Texture Furniture LTD, who could supply the identical design at a quarter of the price. Not surprisingly, Shilav switched suppliers. Tal Children’s Furniture LTD accused the second supplier of ‘passing off’ their product and also infringed on their IP rights.
Since any association of the goods by the public was with Shilav, not the manufacturers, and since there were no registered IP rights, the case was dismissed and the complainant was ordered to pay NIS 10,000 costs to each defendant.
COMMENT
The furniture in question apparently had two small drawers opened by inserting fingers and a couple of larger draws with two handles. The figure taken from Shilav’s current catalogue is thus not identical to the design in question, but is fairly indicative of the type of design masterpiece in question. Also known as Dressing table 57, the unit, together with bed 17 and polka-dot sheets was fancifully marketed as the Alice in Wonderland Set.
The decision is correct, but the mental gymnastics performed by Judge Chana Yinon, the citing of irrelevant case-law and the general write-up of the decision makes for tiring reading. This ruling could have been as short as this summary. 5 pages of discussion was quite unneccessary.
T.A. 35573-07 Tal Children’s Furniture LTD vs. Texture Furniture LTD
