Name change scoots Freepages into court battle

WHEN Freepages, the telephone directory service, decided to change its brand name to Scoot, it didn't think anybody would be upset. But it reckoned without a firm of south coast residential letting agents.

To Freepages, Scoot was a meaningless and inoffensive term that could be adopted in any country where people wanted to find out where the nearest plumber, bookshop or taxi service was.

But to Michael Deacon of Allan & Bath in Bournemouth, Scoot meant something else altogether - an animal and bird repellent used to prevent cats, dogs, rabbits, hares, squirrels and even from fouling the garden.

Earlier this week an Oxfordshire County Court judge agreed with Mr Deacon and ordered Scoot to repay Allan & Bath a year's subscription fees and its out of pocket expenses, a sum totalling pounds 2,750.

The clincher apparently came when Mr Deacon's side produced a box of the animal repellent in court whereupon it was instantly recognised by the district judge. "The lawyer for Freepages took one look at it and his jaw sort of dropped," said Mr Deacon. "It was as if he was thinking to himself 'Beam me up Scottie' .''

In its defence Freepages, which is now valued at pounds 145m, maintained: "There is no difference between Freepages and Scoot apart from the name."

The judge took a different view ruling that the change of trading name "represented a fundamental breach of contract".

Freepages shrugged off its court defeat, saying it had 35,000 subscribers in the UK and had only received two complaints, including the one from Allan & Bath.