Derek Achong

Two busi­ness­men from south Trinidad have failed in their law­suit against the Comp­trol­ler of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, over a de­ci­sion to ex­tend the time for Unit­ed States sports­wear com­pa­ny Nike to sue them for breach of its trade­mark in re­la­tion to a ship­ment of al­leged­ly coun­ter­feit footwear and ap­par­el.

De­liv­er­ing judge­ment on Thurs­day, High Court Judge Ricky Rahim dis­missed the law­suit brought by Yun­ping Lin and Jaifeng Su, who own New Choice Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to their court fil­ings, the is­sue arose af­ter the duo at­tempt­ed to im­port their ship­ment on or around May 27.

On June 22, while they were at­tempt­ing to clear their ship­ment, they were in­formed that it would be seized due to sus­pi­cion that they were in breach of the Trade­mark Act.

The duo’s lawyers ex­changed sev­er­al pieces of cor­re­spon­dence with the di­vi­sion over the de­ten­tion of the ship­ment be­fore they were served with a no­tice of seizure made pur­suant to the Trade­mark Act on Ju­ly 29.

Un­der the no­tice, the di­vi­sion in­di­cat­ed that the seized goods would be re­leased if Nike In­no­vate CV did not ini­ti­ate High Court pro­ceed­ings against the duo and the com­pa­ny with­in 10 days.

Sev­er­al days lat­er, Nike’s at­tor­neys wrote to the duo’s le­gal team and in­di­cat­ed that it had filed a no­tice of ob­jec­tion to the duo’s im­por­ta­tion but not a law­suit.

On Au­gust 23, the di­vi­sion wrote to the busi­ness­men and in­formed them that it had ex­tend­ed the time for Nike to ini­ti­ate its court pro­ceed­ings.

The duo claimed the ex­ten­sion was un­law­ful and the goods should have been re­leased due to Nike’s fail­ure to meet the dead­line.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Rahim ruled that Nike’s re­quest for the ex­ten­sion was not un­law­ful, as it fell with­in the pe­ri­od for mak­ing such. He al­so re­ject­ed the duo’s claim that the comp­trol­ler was on­ly en­ti­tled to con­sid­er the claims in Nike’s re­quest in de­cid­ing whether to grant it.

“To there­fore sug­gest that the Comp­trol­ler was re­strict­ed on­ly to the terms of the let­ter with­out the draw­ing of rea­son­able in­fer­ences and draw­ing on her ex­pe­ri­ence is to fet­ter the ex­er­cise of dis­cre­tion,” Jus­tice Rahim said.

He al­so ruled that the comp­trol­ler was not re­quired to pro­vide rea­sons for the de­ci­sion un­der the Cus­toms Act.

“The court is not sat­is­fied that the de­ci­sion was so un­rea­son­able that no rea­son­able de­ci­sion mak­er could have come to the same con­clu­sion,” he said.

Jus­tice Rahim did rule that the comp­trol­ler was re­quired to no­ti­fy the im­porter of the ex­ten­sion re­quest so they could present a re­sponse.

In dis­miss­ing the case, Jus­tice Rahim or­dered the duo to pay the le­gal costs in­curred for de­fend­ing the case.

The duo was rep­re­sent­ed by Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Ste­fan Ramkissoon.