On 6 November 2026 the High Court of England and Wales agreed to try claims for passing off and unfair competition committed in nine foreign countries, in an English action, under those nine countries’ own laws. The judgment is Aviator LLC & Ors v Spribe OÜ & Ors [2026] EWHC 2840 (BP), handed down by Mr Justice Tappin. The defendant, Spribe, had applied for permission to amend its Re-Re-Re-Amended Defence and Counterclaim to add claims that the claimants’ launch of a rival online crash game amounted to passing off or unfair competition in Canada, Colombia, Ghana, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Romania, Serbia and South Africa — which the judgment calls the Combined Territories — and in 28 further countries besides. The claimants resisted on forum grounds, arguing that the alleged torts were committed, and the damage suffered, in each of those markets.
The judge accepted that the forum conveniens test applied to the amendment application, so Spribe had to show that England and Wales was clearly or distinctly the appropriate forum. He found at paragraph 68 that the only factor of any real weight against England was that an English court would have to apply foreign law, and that it was outweighed by avoiding a dispute fragmented across ten different sets of proceedings — particularly since the English court is already going to decide the claimants’ copyright claim covering those same territories, and that copyright claim is a central plank of the defence to the passing off case. The amendments were allowed for the nine Combined Territories and refused for the other 28. The main trial was expedited to October 2027 (paragraph 95), with a preliminary-issues trial on issue estoppel brought forward to April 2027 (paragraph 103); an order to that effect was made on 26 October 2026.
Foreign unfair competition law no longer has to be proved to get through the door
The mechanism that made this possible is the presumption of similarity. Spribe pleaded no content of foreign law at all, relying instead on the fact that every territory is a signatory to Article 10bis of the Paris Convention, which obliges states to provide effective protection against acts creating confusion with a competitor’s business or goods. (Serbia is not a TRIPS signatory, so Article 10bis carried the argument.) Both sides accepted that English passing off is, as the judgment puts it, a minimalist implementation of that obligation — it demands misrepresentation causing damage to goodwill, where Article 10bis asks only for confusion. From that the judge reasoned at paragraph 36 that a claimant who wins under English law is unlikely to lose under the foreign law, so the claims had a real prospect of success even unpleaded as to foreign law.
The claimants’ best counter was illegality: evidence from Serbian, Colombian, South African, Kenyan, Italian, Ghanaian and Canadian lawyers that goodwill built through copyright infringement or unlicensed gambling may not be protectable in those jurisdictions. The judge was not persuaded that any of it was materially different from the English illegality doctrine in Patel v Mirza. He did, however, direct that foreign law now be pleaded properly and in stand-alone pleadings on both sides, including any foreign law of joint liability — Rome II makes the applicable foreign law govern liability for another person’s acts. The presumption gets a claim in; it does not survive an opponent who actually pleads the local rule.
What killed the other 28 countries was evidence, not law
This is the part worth reading twice if you own a brand that trades through distributors or platforms. The 28 Further Territories were not refused because English courts cannot reach them. They were refused because, at paragraph 43, the pleaded goodwill was not particularised country by country. Spribe relied on sponsorship of UFC and WWE, of AC Milan and of a charity football match, on trade-show attendance and on industry awards — but gave no particulars of exposure to any of that in the territories concerned, and the only trade shows identified were in Italy and Brazil, neither of which was on the list. There was no pleading or evidence of user numbers in any Further Territory. The judge also rejected, even for the nine territories he allowed, a plea of goodwill in the game’s “distinctive gaming experience”, which he held far too vague. The amendments for the Further Territories were refused at paragraph 55, along with a separate foreign copyright claim he regarded as trivial on the evidence.
So the operational lesson is a records lesson. Global marketing achievements prove goodwill nowhere in particular. What a cross-border unregistered-rights claim needs, per market, is local user and revenue data, local advertising and media spend, dated evidence of which local platforms carried the product and from when, and local recognition of the specific sign relied on. Most brand owners can produce that for their top three markets and nothing for the next thirty. If your enforcement plan assumes you could plead goodwill in forty countries, test it against what your marketing team can actually evidence for one of them.
A registration got relief in weeks; goodwill got a trial date in 2027
The contrast inside this one judgment is the strongest argument for filing that we have seen this year. At paragraph 107 the judge records that the claimants’ game is no longer available in Italy — not because of anything the English court did, but because a Maltese court granted an interim injunction on the strength of an EU trade mark registration owned by Spribe. One registered right, one application, EU-wide effect. The unregistered route produced a jurisdiction fight that has already been to the Court of Appeal and back on the applicable-law question alone, a preliminary-issues trial in April 2027, a main trial in October 2027, and interim relief confined to three countries.
That interim injunction, set out at paragraph 177, bars the claimants from launching or offering a crash game under the name AVIATOR or a colourably similar device targeted at Colombia, Romania or Serbia — but with a proviso preserving any website, app or platform that was already offering the game on or before 3 July 2026. Whoever was live first keeps the market until trial. Canada and Italy were dealt with by accepted undertakings to give 28 days’ written notice of any launch or targeted marketing. If you are weighing the cost of national filings across a launch map against the cost of litigating unregistered rights, this case prices both: national and regional trademark filing in the markets on your roadmap is the cheaper half by an order of magnitude, and a clearance search before launch is what tells you whether the first-mover in a market is you.
An injunction abroad can start a clock against your own registration
One passage deserves to be on every portfolio manager’s radar. At paragraph 66 the judge accepted the claimants’ point that an English injunction restraining use of their mark in Serbia might render their own Serbian registrations vulnerable to revocation for non-use — and held that this was no reason to decline jurisdiction, since a Serbian court granting the same injunction would produce the same effect. He was careful to add that validity remains the exclusive province of the Serbian registry and courts; an English judgment on passing off decides nothing about whether a national registration stands.
Both halves of that matter. First, an interim order or undertaking that stops you using a mark in a market does not stop that market’s non-use period running, and a rights holder who accepts such an order without docketing the exposure can emerge from a win with a cancellable registration. Where local law allows it, proper reasons for non-use should be recorded contemporaneously rather than reconstructed years later. Second, a favourable English judgment is not a clearance: the national registrations, oppositions and cancellation actions still have to be run separately, which is precisely why the judge noted that the Serbian registration would weigh heavily against an injunction in Serbia itself, and gave the claimants liberty to apply to vary the order for that country.
The notification order is the sleeper obligation
Finally, the claimants lost the 28 territories as claims and gained them as obligations. At paragraph 184 the judge held they must give at least two weeks’ notice, to the best of their knowledge and belief, before their game launches in any of the Further Territories — and, crucially, that they must require that notice from the aggregators and operators they contract with now or in future. A litigation order has just reached into their commercial contracts. For anyone distributing through platforms, resellers or aggregators, the point is that you cannot comply with a notification order you have no contractual right to the information behind. Notice-of-launch and cooperation clauses cost nothing to insert at the negotiation stage and are not available at the injunction stage.
Nothing on the merits has been decided; the substance waits for 2027, with parallel proceedings continuing in the United States and Brazil. But the jurisdictional point is now made: where there is a genuine anchor claim in England and the foreign markets share the Paris Convention floor, a brand owner can ask one court to decide a multi-country unfair competition dispute once. Whether you get to use that depends entirely on whether you can plead goodwill, market by market, with evidence you have already collected.