The owner of a 'diamond' company has successfully fought off a bid by her former husband and business partner to register the name of her company as his own.

Elaine Reffell and her daughter Emily Grace Foreman set up their own ethical diamond business Ethica Diamonds in Truro selling lab grown diamonds after she and her husband Jason Foreman divorced.

Mr Foreman is director of Diotima & Co based in Roche but tried to register the trademark Ethica Diamonds and Ethica Diamond with The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) in 2020.

This was despite having transferred the domain names to his former wife in 2019 after they were divorced.

At the UKIPO hearing it was claimed that he kept an eye on his wife and daughter's Truro based business website and when he saw she was rebranding from Kinetique Jewellery to Ethica Diamonds he attempted to register the names as his own.

This was despite a branding exercise that began in November 2018 by Ms Reffell and her daughter that Mr Foreman was fully aware of as he was still a director of the company at the time.

The hearing was told that he admitted to his daughter Emily Foreman that he was not interested in the Ethica Diamond name and didn't intend to do anything with it. He said he would transfer it back to her mother once she agreed to pay him "damages" money of a one up-front payment of £30,000 and then £2,500 per month for three years for claimed estimated damages to his IQ Diamond brand.

In September 2020, Mr Foreman also tried to prevent his wife and daughter's stone supplier from supplying it on the basis that he "owned" the Ethica Diamond business and that the stone supply needed to be routed through him.

The UKIPO hearing found that her former husband had acted in "bad faith" when he registered the claim, saying that the whole premise of the case was based upon unreasonable behaviour on the part of Mr Foreman.

It said the whole purpose of his application was to disrupt his former wife and daughter's business (party B) and extract monies from them.

The hearing stated that "above scale costs" would be appropriate for Mr Foreman to have to pay, as there was an issue regarding the standard of behaviour of Mr Foreman (party A). A figure is yet to be determined.

"The whole premise of Party B's case is based upon unreasonable behaviour on the part of Party A, with the whole purpose of Party A's mark being to disrupt Party B's business," the hearing said.

"Party A withdrew its application very late in the day and after most costs had already been accrued.

"Party A 'fought to the death' on everything and much of its evidence was irrelevant."

Mr Foreman's case started to unravel after his ex-wife's solicitor applied to cross examine both him and his new wife on their motives for registering the trade mark.

They withdrew their evidence, thereby removing the possibility or need for that cross examination.

"I cannot ignore the negative inferences created by this action," the hearing officer said.

The hearing found that the registration was motivated, at least in part, by an attempt to create a way to charge his former wife a licence fee for the use of "Ethica Diamond" and was aware of his former wife's use of this mark and its intention to rebrand to "Ethica Diamonds".

Summarising his decision the hearing officer said: "The evidence, whilst it could have been more complete, clearly illustrates that Mr Foreman knew that Party B was trading as Ethica Diamonds and it is just not credible that he did not know.

"Consequently, contrary to Ms Collett's [Mr Foreman's solicitor] submission, the pre-emptive action of Party A applying for its contested mark does amount to an act of bad faith. It appears that its sole purpose was to cause difficulty to Party B and to provide a tool that could be used to extract monies from Party B."

READ NEXT:

Boys who helped save woman from drowning in rip tide praised as trio reunited

They said it was also highly significant that Mr Foreman withdrew all his evidence that was originally provided to counter Party B's bad faith claim, therefore removing the need for the previously agreed cross-examination of Mr Foreman and his new wife Avila.

"I cannot ignore the negative inferences created by this action," the hearing officer said. "It was in the gift of Party A to provide evidence, both in writing and aurally, in response to the claims of bad faith. The withdrawal left nothing more than a bare denial of the case put forward by Party B."