[jeza]

Do you own a trademark in Europe? Your lawyers won't necessarily be much help if not.

[jaksmit]

@jeza the company is in the UK; in the UK you don't have to register a trademark as there is support for unregistered trademarks. The law is called "passing off" and looks to protect instances where a product or service could easily be confused with another : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off

I previously had to take somebody to England's High Court for exactly this

[oneeyedpigeon]

I live in London. Will the company called Luna deliver to me from San Francisco? If not, how am I going to get the two confused, and how are they dealing in remotely the same market?

[rahimnathwani]

I previously had to take somebody to England's High Court for exactly this

I'm curious. Would you mind sharing some of the background, and the outcome?

[rahimnathwani]

Interestingly, there are a number of EU trademarks which (i) contain the word Luna, and (ii) include reference to class 39 and 'Transport; packaging and storage of goods.'.

For example: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU009432147

Also interesting is what the Intellectual Property Office has to say about passing off (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-about/t-protect/t-protect-u...):

To be successful in a passing off action, you must prove that:

- the mark is yours

- you have built up a reputation in the mark

- you have been harmed in some way by the other person's use of the mark

It can be very difficult, and as a result, expensive to prove a passing off action.

IANAL but it would seem that a US-based company with (I'm assuming) no customers or operations in the UK would have a hard time showing that the use of a mark by a company which operates within a very small area of London has caused it harm. Also tough to show 'you have built up a reputation in the mark' given that Luna was only founded a few months ago (according to AngelList).