On January 12 2007, the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in a long-running dispute between Special Effects and L'Oreal as to whether the same grounds could be adopted in infringement or invalidity proceedings after they had already been unsuccessfully deployed in an opposition action. The High Court had held that once a mark had overcome an opposition and been accepted for registration, the opponent was estopped from attacking the mark a second time either by infringement or invalidation proceedings. This decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which held that Registry proceedings did not involve any cause of action which could form the basis of an estoppel and that the Trade Marks Act 1994, which provided for the co-existence of both opposition and invalidation actions, meant that opposition actions were by their nature non-final.
