A moron in a hurry

A moron in a hurry is a phrase that has been used in legal cases, especially in the UK, involving trademark infringement and passing off. Where one party alleges that another (the defendant) has infringed their intellectual property rights by offering for sale a product that is confusably similar to their own, the court has to decide whether a reasonable person would be misled by the defendant's trademark or the get-up of their product. It has been held that "if only a moron in a hurry would be misled" the case is not made out.[1] Although this formulation addresses only fairly extreme instances of confusability, and says nothing about less clear examples, the phrase is sometimes referred to as a "test".[2]

  1. ^ Cornish, W. R. (1989). Intellectual property : Patents, Copyright, Trade Marks, and Allied Rights (2nd ed.). London: Sweet & Maxwell. pp. 415, note 88. ISBN 0-421-37980-4. OCLC 24212824.
  2. ^ Manssor, Seema S (31 July 2017). "High court uses 'moron in a hurry', Lapp and classic trinity tests to decide trademark infringement case". Lexology. Archived from the original on 4 January 2022. Retrieved 4 January 2022.