Bargain Busting v Shenzhen SKE: contempt proceedings struck out after solicitors' IPO representations held not improper

The High Court has struck out criminal contempt proceedings brought against a law firm and two of its solicitors who wrote to the UK Intellectual Property Office asking it to delay registering a trade mark whilst an appeal was pending. HHJ Paul Matthews, sitting as a judge of the High Court in the Chancery Appeals List, held that the representations made to the IPO were consistent with long-standing tribunal practice and fell well short of the threshold required for criminal contempt.

The underlying dispute concerned the "Crystal Bar" trade mark, registered by vaping company Bargain Busting Limited (BBL). Shenzhen SKE Technology Company Limited (SST) had opposed registration before the IPO and subsequently appealed to the High Court, where Michael Tappin KC dismissed the appeal in July 2025. The resulting order provided that the mark "shall proceed to registration" and set a deadline of 25 July 2025 for any application to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal. No stay was included in the order.

Following the order, solicitors at Stobbs IP Limited — Ms Wan-Yi Tsai and Mr Jixuan Si — wrote to the IPO requesting that no registry updates be effected pending the outcome of any further appeal. BBL's solicitors responded that the order had immediate effect and that an appeal did not operate as a stay under CPR rule 52.16. BBL subsequently launched criminal contempt proceedings, alleging that the emails to the IPO were false, misleading, and made with the specific intent of interfering with the administration of justice.

HHJ Matthews was unimpressed. The judgement addresses, at some length, a wider phenomenon the court described as the increasing "weaponisation" of the contempt jurisdiction — the use of committal applications, or the threat of them, as litigation tactics rather than genuine attempts to uphold the public interest. He observed that contempt applications were once reserved for serious non-compliance with injunctions or interference with juries, and expressed concern that their misuse consumes judicial and legal resources to the detriment of other litigants.

On the substance, the court applied the principles recently restated by the Court of Appeal in BHP Group (UK) Limited v Municipio de Mariana [2026] EWCA Civ 294. Criminal contempt is concerned solely with the public interest in the administration of justice, not with the private interests of the litigant invoking the jurisdiction. BBL's argument that no public interest requirement applied — on the basis that no permission was needed to bring the application — was rejected. The relevant distinction, the court held, is between public and private interest, not between permission and no permission.

The court found that most of the impugned representations were requests or expressions of SST's position rather than statements of fact, and that requests are not capable of being false or misleading in the relevant sense. Even treating the clearest indicative statements as false, the court held they could not have interfered with the administration of justice: the IPO alone had power to register the mark, knew the legal position, and was acting consistently with its own Manual of Trade Marks Practice, which provided that registration would be suspended "until the appeal process has been concluded". Dr James Porter, the IPO's chief hearing officer, had himself concluded that SST's request was "consistent with current and longstanding Tribunal practice" and that the IPO had not been misled.

The court further held that submitting to a tribunal or government office that a legal right should not yet be given effect — whilst accepting that the law is ultimately applicable — is not conduct that is "improper" in the sense required by the contempt authorities. Lawyers are entitled to argue what the law requires; losing that argument does not render their conduct contumacious. On mens rea, the court found no real prospect of establishing that the solicitors appreciated or were reckless as to any risk of interference with the administration of justice.

The application to join Mr Jan-Caspar Rebling, a more senior solicitor at Stobbs IP alleged to have supervised the correspondence, also fell away. The court observed, obiter, that joining a supervisor without any new allegation against him, whilst the firm itself remained a respondent, would achieve insufficient benefit to justify the additional expenditure of resources.