A doppelganger company has been forced to change its name following a complaint from John Sisk & Son.
The contractor contacted the Company Names Tribunal after the name ‘John Sisk Ltd’ was registered in August last year.
Corby-based John Sisk Ltd has one director – Alexandra Anamaria Badita – and has filed no accounts since it was established.
Tier one contractor John Sisk & Son applied for the new firm’s name to be changed under the provisions of section 69(1) of the Companies Act 2006.
Badita did not respond to a letter from the tribunal and John Sisk & Son’s application was treated as unopposed after no defence was filed.
John Sisk Ltd was given one month to change its name, and adjudicator Susan Eaves warned that Badita had a legal duty to avoid taking any action resulting in another company being registered with an offending name.
“Non-compliance may result in an action being brought for contempt of court and may result in a custodial sentence,” Eaves said in her 24 October ruling.
Under normal circumstances, John Sisk & Son would have been entitled to a contribution towards its costs, but because it failed to contact the offending firm before making its application, no award was made.
A spokesperson for John Sisk & Son told Construction News: “John Sisk Ltd was established by the Companies House recently in the UK.
“We objected on the basis that the name was too close to ours and they were also operating in the construction sector.
“The tribunal agreed with Sisk and granted an order for the company to change its name.”
It is not the first time that a leading construction firm has had to take legal action to protect its name.
In a similar case last year, Wates and Morgan Sindall took three companies to court for using their identities.
Finding in favour of the top tier contractors, the tribunal told the offending companies to change their names and pay £800 each to the firms that had complained.
The Company Names Tribunal, part of the government’s Intellectual Property Office, handles cases where a company name is registered for the primary purpose of preventing someone else with legitimate interest from registering it, or demanding payment from them to release it.
Companies can defend themselves if they can show the name was adopted in good faith or the interests of the applicant were not adversely affected to any significant extent.
