Hayer Construction v. Hayhurst, 2022 BCPC 228
2022-10-17
Read full decision. Summary prepared by Alan Macek:
The Plaintiff now sues the Defendant for producing a graphic design logo which was unusable without risk of infringing Harvard University’s intellectual property rights. ... The parties entered into an oral contract in mid-December 2018, whereby the Defendant agreed to render to the Claimant certain marketing, branding and graphic design services. ... I conclude that Robin Hayer made a business decision to abandon Hayer Construction’s use of the Hayer Construction logo. He believed the Hayer Construction logo was too similar for his comfort to the Harvard School of Design logo. He made this decision without the benefit of legal advice on the competing intellectual property rights. ... I do not find any basis to imply a term that “the Design Services and its components would neither infringe on the intellectual property rights of other entities nor attract sufficiently credible accusations of infringement such that the Design Services would become unusable”.