09.07.2026
A recent Court of Appeal decision underlines why trade mark licence registration matters before infringement claims arise.
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Lifestyle Equities CV v Frasers Group Trading Ltd [2026] EWCA Civ 583
A trade mark licensee is a person or business granted formal permission by a trade mark proprietor (the licensor) to use their registered trade mark. Licensees have specific rights in the event of infringement by a third party. They can call on the proprietor to bring infringement proceedings, and an exclusive licensee may bring proceedings in their own name if the proprietor fails to act. Additionally, a licensor’s infringement claim can, in principle, account for losses suffered by its licensees.
Registration of a licence with the trade marks register is voluntary under UK law. Many businesses choose not to register licences for reasons of confidentiality or administrative simplicity.
In a significant recent judgment, the Court of Appeal answered a key practical question: Can a proprietor recover losses suffered by its unregistered licensees and sub-licensees as part of its own infringement action? The unequivocal answer is no, unless the licence is registered in sufficient time to avoid the limitation bar.
Where a licence is not registered, sections 25 and 30 of the Trade Marks Act 1994 ("TMA 1994") operate to limit the licensee's protection.
S.25(3)(b) TMA 1994 states:
Until an application has been made for registration of the prescribed particulars of a registrable transaction—
...
(b) a person claiming to be a licensee by virtue of the transaction does not have the protection of section 30 or 31 (rights and remedies of licensee in relation to infringement).
S.30(6) TMA 1994 states:
In infringement proceedings brought by the proprietor of a registered trade mark any loss suffered or likely to be suffered by licensees shall be taken into account; and the court may give such directions as it thinks fit as to the extent to which the plaintiff is to hold the proceeds of any pecuniary remedy on behalf of licensees.
The central issue was whether s.30(6) constitutes “protection of licensees” within the meaning of s.25(3)(b), making it unavailable for unregistered licences.
Lifestyle Equities C.V. ("CV") is the registered proprietor of certain UK trade marks (the "Marks"), and Lifestyle Licensing B.V. ("BV") its exclusive licensee1. CV and BV alleged that the defendants had infringed the Marks in 2014 and 2015. Proceedings were issued in September 2015, and on 20 April 2018 the claimants received judgment mostly in their favour. CV and BV elected for an inquiry as to damages.
Years later, in points of claim served in 2023, the claimants sought to recover not just their own losses but also the losses of various sub-licensees of the Marks, relying on s.30(6). The catch: only one of those sub-licences (Harvest Group UK Ltd) had ever been registered, and even that registration was not accepted until April 2025.
The defendants applied for summary judgment, arguing that s.25(3)(b) barred any claim for a sub-licensee's losses where the relevant licence remained unregistered.
At first instance, Marcus Smith J dismissed that application. He read s.30(6) as having two halves: the first ("losses…shall be taken into account") protected the proprietor, not the licensee, and so fell outside s.25(3)(b) entirely; only the second half (the court's discretion as to how proceeds of judgment are held) constituted a licensee protection — and even that, he held, could be unlocked by registering the licence late, there being no deadline in the TMA 1994 Act for doing so.
The Court of Appeal disagreed on both points and allowed the appeal.
S.30(6) is a licensee protection, full stop. The Court held that s.30(6) TMA 1994 cannot be artificially split in two. Read as a whole, s.30 TMA 1994 sets up a "waterfall" of rights and remedies for licensees: a licensee can compel the proprietor to bring infringement proceedings on its behalf (s.30(2) TMA 1994) or issue its own claim if the proprietor fails to comply (s.30(3) TMA 1994). S.30(6) TMA 1994 addresses the remaining scenario, where the proprietor brings infringement proceedings without being compelled to do so: it gives the proprietor nothing for its own benefit (the proprietor already has full rights to recover its own losses under s.14 TMA 1994) and exists purely to ensure licensees' losses are captured and, ultimately, paid out to them. The whole of s.30(6) TMA 1994 is therefore a "protection of licensee" within s.25(3)(b) TMA 1994, meaning it is unavailable for as long as the relevant licence remains unregistered.
No deadline to register, but limitation still runs. The Court agreed there is no fixed cut-off in s.25(3) TMA 1994 for registering a licence, and that registration can operate retrospectively. However, that does not mean a claim for a licensee's losses can be bolted on at any point before final judgment, however late. A claim for a licensee's losses is a separate cause of action from the proprietor's own claim and “cannot be made until an application to register the licence is made”. Critically, that cause of action accrues (and the limitation clock starts running) from the date of the infringement itself, not from the date the licence is registered; registration is merely a procedural precondition to bringing the claim, by analogy with the position long established for patents2. The ordinary Limitation Act time limits therefore run against the licensee's claim independently of when the main proceedings were issued. If the licence isn't registered until after that limitation period has already expired, the claim is time-barred.
On the facts, the last alleged infringement was in mid-2016, the claim for sub-licensees' losses wasn't raised until 2023, and the one relevant licence wasn't registered until 2025. As a result, those claims were statute-barred, and the Court of Appeal granted the defendants summary judgment dismissing the licensees’ claims.
Don't treat the trade marks register as optional paperwork. If you're a proprietor relying on s.30(6) to recover losses on behalf of licensees or sub-licensees, you need those licences registered and registered in good time, well within the limitation period for the underlying infringement. Leave it too late, and the licensee's losses simply won't be recoverable, no matter how strong the underlying infringement claim is.
Confidentiality and commercial sensitivity are legitimate business concerns, but they are not a substitute for registration. Businesses relying on licensing arrangements should review their register entries now, rather than discovering the gap only once an infringement claim is already underway and the limitation period has run out.
1 BV's own claim did not depend on the s.30 licensee-protection regime in the same way as the sub-licensees' claims. As a qualifying exclusive licensee under s.31 TMA 1994, BV had by virtue of s.30(7) "the rights and remedies of an assignee as if [it] were the proprietor of the registered trade mark," and so stood in the same position as CV for the purposes of bringing the claim. The point in issue concerned the sub-licensees further down the chain, who had no equivalent status.
2 Per the House of Lords in Sevcon Ltd v Lucas CAV Ltd [1986] 1 WLR 462, applying the earlier Court of Appeal decision in Coburn v Colledge [1897] 1 QB 702. Both were cited to the Court of Appeal for the claim that a registration requirement of this kind is procedural only, and does not affect the date on which the underlying cause of action accrues.
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