Licensees beware!

Hudson Bay Apparel Brands LLC -v- Umbro International Limited [A3/2009/2551]

All apparel brand licensors and licensees with agreements governed by English law should carefully note the Court of Appeal's unanimous judgment in the ongoing dispute between Hudson Bay and Umbro.

While we cannot provide detailed comment, we can say that licensees who receive approval to make and sell specific apparel lines that arguably fall outside the scope of their licence should be extremely careful to ensure the approval is given by an employee of the licensor in a senior executive position. They would now be unwise to rely on such an approval given for the licensor, for example by an agent, as to whether that approval proves to be contractually binding on the licensor will always be open to challenge. If the approval was found to not be binding, this could mean that a licensee who had sold apparel (believing it had a binding approval to do so) could be in breach of its licence.

So licensees beware.