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Premier Inn is the latest target of EasyGroup’s wide-ranging efforts to implement trademarks through courts as Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s company challenged the UK’s largest hotel chain with “Rest Easy” branding.
A lawyer for EasyGroup told London’s High Court on Tuesday that widespread use of his term in a sign and marketing campaign risks disrupting consumers and undermining the brand’s value.
Premier Inn’s legal team denounced the Easy Group at the start of a week-long civil trial that attempted to monopolize “normal English language.” EasyGroup is found in brands such as EasyCar and EasyCruise, such as Bultse Airline EasyJet, and has filed a series of lawsuits against various companies over alleged trademark infringement in recent years.
The Premier Inn is a particularly well-known target, with over 840 hotels across the UK. EasyGroup claims that the hotel chain owned by Whitbread Group has infringed three registered trademarks: EasyHotel, Easy and Lest Easy Apartments.
The court heard that Premier Inn adopted the term “rest” in its branding in 2021, bringing the message of “safety and security” to consumers in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Emma Himsworth KC, who represents the company, described an easy group of arguments written as “serial litigators” in “largely failed attempts” to secure monopoly with the word “easy.”
“The phrase “rest” is ubiquitous,” she said. “It has been used by public experts in the UK for at least two centuries,” added Himsworth, including publications such as Lady’s Magazine and The Financial Times.
She said Premier Inn “we had no intention of “advantages of the benefits” of the EasyGroup brand, and “we would never copy, copy or refer to it.”
Himsworth also claimed that there was “no chance of confusion” between Easygroup’s Rest Easy Apartments and Premier Inn signs. “Apartments and hotels don’t offer the same product.”
Simon Malynicz KC, representing EasyGroup, said it was “nonsense” to claim a company founded by Haji-Ioannou, making “an illegitimate attempt to monopolise the usual dictionary or descriptive language.”
“Everyone is free to use the word “easy” in the way nature intended. Explanatory, as an adjective, such as a phrase,” he said in a written argument.
“What they’re not allowed is what Premier Inn did here. They aim to do descriptive use while simultaneously using it as part of the main branding by the company, so they acquire the trademark importance in the same way Tesco “every little” or “just do it.” ”
He added: “We don’t have the right to disrupt the public, damage other brands of brands, or pay profits generated by other businesses without investment or payment.”
