New Zealand: German building materials company Knauf has failed to get Fletcher Building's use of the 'Batts' trademark for building insulation thrown out on the grounds that it is a common name in general public use.
Justice Brendan Brown refused a request to revoke the trademark and said that the use of the word in the installation instructions on packaging didn't infringe trademark. "There is clearly a not insignificant degree of use of the words 'batt' and 'batts' to describe insulation in a generic, non-proprietary sense," Justice Brown said. "However, collectively this evidence is not of a quantity or a quality to cause me to be satisfied that the trademark has become a common name in general public use for pieces of fibrous insulation."
Knauf exported some of its Earthwool insulation to New Zealand in 2011, with packaging displaying the words 'batt' and 'batts' in the installation instructions, with sparked the litigation. Fletcher protested the use of its trademark word 'Batts' and Knauf subsequently claimed that the word had become generic to describe insulation.
The High Court case shows intense rivalry between the companies in New Zealand, where an estimated 15Mm2 of insulation products are sold every year, most of it made from glass. Fletcher's subsidiary Tasman Insulation makes more than 7Mm2 of insulation from recycled glass a year, sold under the Pink Batts brand.
Fletcher is facing increasing competition from Knauf, which has about US$1.9bn in annual insulation sales worldwide compared to Fletcher's US$1.3bn of total building product sales, which also includes plasterboard, aluminium doors and windows and roofing. In February 2014 Fletcher said that the local insulation market remained competitive as price declines offset volume gains.
