Briffa is very pleased to have acted for Easyfeetstore OÜ, Easyfeet Inc. and Andrii Klishyn in the successful defence of a trade mark infringement claim brought by EasyGroup Limited (“EasyGroup”) in easyGroup Limited v (1) Easyfeetstore OÜ (2) Andriy Klishyn (3) EASYFEET INC. [2026] EWHC 767 (IPEC).
EasyGroup is the owner of all intellectual property rights relating to various “easy” businesses set up by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The most well known of these is easyJet but there are hundreds of other less well-known brands including easyJeans (easyjeans.co.uk), easyBeer (easybeer.co.uk) and easyBags (easybags.com).
Since around the early 2000s, easyGroup has developed a reputation in the IP world for bringing a high number of trade mark infringement claims against parties making use of “easy” within their brand. In 2024, Mr Justice Fancourt described easyGroup’s behaviour as “bullying and intimidatory” in a failed claim involving Easyfundraising Ltd.
EASYFEET insoles are sold by Easyfeetstore OÜ (an Estonian company) and Easyfeet Inc. (a US company) Mr Klishyn is a part owner and director of these companies.
Following a letter of claim for trade mark infringement, in June 2023 easyGroup issued court proceedings against Easyfeetstore and Mr Klishyn in the General Intellectual Property List of the High Court. After the defence was filed, the parties agreed by consent to transfer the claim to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (also known as the IPEC).
Once various procedural steps were taken, including a Case Management Conference, disclosure and evidence, the parties attended a two day trial in February 2026 – the result of which was His Honour Judge Hacon holding “easyGroup’s claims of infringement of its trade marks, its claim for passing off and the application for a declaration the Easyfeet Mark is invalid are all dismissed. “
The case serves as a good reminder on a number of topics:
We first spoke with Easyfeet in 2023 by which point the claim had already been issued by easyGroup. For various reasons, Easyfeet wanted to explore replacing its then solicitors with a new firm and we were of course very happy to help; a party may change their legal representation at any time (before and after court proceedings are commenced) and there is no reason to stick with a firm if you are not gelling with them.
When devising a defence strategy for Easyfeet, we were keen to keep to a sensible and strategic approach where every decision had a key benefit and money was spent on elements of the case that mattered. Easyfeet liked this strategy, and so did we, meaning the rest is now history.
The IPEC is a specialist division of the High Court set up to determine intellectual property claims. Thanks to a number of reforms, in which it was identified that legal costs and uncertainties about litigation were dissuading SMEs from bringing/defending claims, the IPEC was created to provide a procedure for intellectual property litigation which is speedier and less costly than is the case in the rest of the High Court; a key part of the IPEC is its costs and damages cap where recoverable legal costs are capped to £60,000 and maximum damages awards are £500,000 which allow parties to clearly understand their maximum exposure.
The General IP List of the High Court does not have the same procedures in place as the IPEC and so generally speaking claims take longer, cost more and there is less of an ability to predict maximum exposure.
Once we got involved in this case, we quickly identified the IPEC was likely to be a suitable forum for the dispute as it was a straight forward trade mark infringement claim (the type the IPEC hears on a very regular basis), a further key benefit is that by moving the claim to the IPEC we could give Easyfeet some clear indications about its maximum exposure win or lose.
The common element between the EASYFEET brand and easyGroup’s trade marks was, you guessed it, “easy”. His Honour Judge Hacon found there was no relevant similarity between the EASYFEET brand and easyGroup’s trade marks, in doing so he referred to a 2024 case involving easyGroup in which it was held “The ‘easy’ element of the [easyJet] mark, however, has no inherent distinctive character: it is a descriptive word, which indicates that the services are easy to use.”
The key point here is that trade marks which are descriptive are less powerful and more difficult to enforce over distinctive marks. When creating a brand, brand owners are well advised to say away from generic or descriptive elements as these elements will give rise to difficulties in trade mark registration and enforcement strategies.
If you’d like to hear directly from our partner involved in the case, Sam O’Toole has compiled a brief overview video, further outlining the ways in which Briffa was able to support EASYFEET through the process. To enquire about a trademark dispute or for clear advice on copyright law, get in touch with our experts today.
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