The Court held that the marks CRV GLADIATOR FAMILY and CRV FAMILIA were deceptively similar to the registered device mark CR-V under s 44 of the Trade Marks Act 1995, dismissing the appeal from the Registrar's refusal of registration. The Court found that the letters CRV were wholly incorporated into the applicant marks and, in the context of automotive naming conventions (house brand, range name, model name), a notional buyer would be caused to wonder whether the goods emanated from the same source as CR-V branded goods. The evidence that 'RV' was commonly understood as 'recreational vehicle' within the caravan industry was insufficient to establish that the broader public would discount the letters as descriptive, and the hyphen in CR-V had no aural effect given that face-to-face oral sales discussions were the norm in the industry.
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