THOMKAT (Germany) vs. TOMCAT (Australia)
The Scenario
A high-stakes trademark infringement dispute commences in the Federal Court of Australia.
- Applicant: ThomKat GmbH (Germany) – Established sunscreen brand.
- Respondent: Tomcat Skincare Pty Ltd (Australia) – New market entrant selling tanning lotion.
- The Claim: ThomKat alleges the Australian brand “TOMCAT” is deceptively similar to their longstanding “THOMKAT” mark, causing consumer confusion.
The Challenge
ThomKat’s legal team is faced with a chaotic data dump: years of marketing collateral, product packaging iterations, internal emails, and metadata-heavy design files. Manually cross-referencing these to find inconsistencies in the other side’s story would typically take junior solicitors and paralegals days of billable time.
How Legal Ready’s AI Features Can Support Case Strategy
eBrief Ready and Litigation Ready can save time and cut through the noise by deploying three specific AI features to organise and analyse the uploaded evidentiary set (marketing materials, emails, witness statements and design logs).
1. Smart Classification & Automated Organisation
Before the team even begins reading, eBrief Ready’s Smart Classification and customisable folders help bring order to the chaos. Instead of relying on vague filenames, the AI reads the content of every document to understand what it is.
- Auto-Renaming & Numbering: The system automatically identifies documents with generic names (like Scan_104.pdf) and renames them based on their content and date (e.g., 2020-03-12_Invoice_Design_Agency.pdf), applying a consistent numbering system instantly.
- Customised Folder Allocation: The system automatically sorts hundreds of loose files into a logical, customised folder structure, such as: “Marketing Materials,” “Financial Records,” “Internal Correspondence,” and “Regulatory Filings.”
The Output: A fully organised, indexed, searchable and collaboration-ready matter workspace created in minutes, saving huge amounts of administrative time.
2. Intelligent Evidence Mapping & Conflict Detection
The AI moves beyond simple keyword search to understand the context of the evidence, mapping connections and – crucially – contradictions across the document set.
Credibility Checks (Correspondence vs. Testimony):
- The Claim: Tomcat’s witness statement claims the logo was designed independently in-house in 2018.
- The AI Find: The AI surfaces Tomcat’s external vendor email chain dated 2020 – after ThomKat’s expansion into the region – subject line “Project Kick-off: Logo Concept Options.” This directly contradicts the testimony regarding both the timeline (2018 vs 2020) and the origin (in-house vs. external agency).
Consumer Confusion Identification: The system scans thousands of pages of distributor emails to surface specific instances where customers asked, “Are Tomcat and ThomKat the same company?” – a “smoking gun” for deceptive similarity.
The Output: A hyperlinked Evidence Conflict Map. This allows ThomKat’s legal team to instantly click through to documents that contradict the Tomcat’s witness statements during cross-examination.
3. Automated Prior Use Chronology
In trademark law, “who was there first” is everything. eBrief Ready’s AI ingests every document containing a date – filing records, design drafts, shipment logs and emails – to build an automated timeline.
- First-to-Market Determination: Based on the documents selected, the system pinpoints the exact date THOMKAT sunscreen entered the German and Australian markets versus the first TOMCAT advertisement in Australia.
- Brand Evolution Tracking: The AI sequences early brand concept notes, showing the evolution of the naming convention. It highlights gaps where Tomcat claims ” development” was happening, but no documentation exists.
- Market Overlap Analysis: The timeline sets out the specific date range where both brands first co-existed on third-party online marketplaces, establishing the start of the infringing period.
The Output: A jurisdiction-tagged, interactive Prior Use Chronology. This is exported directly into the mediation bundle and submissions, ensuring the timeline of events is factually indisputable.
The ROI for ThomKat's Legal Team
| Metric | Traditional Process | With eBrief Ready / Litigation Ready AI |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence Review | 20+ hours of manual tagging and sorting. | Instant mapping upon upload. |
| Fact Checking | Risk of missing inconsistencies. | Automated flagging of contradictions. |
| Chronology | Manual data entry into Excel. | Auto-generated, hyperlinked timeline. |
Result
Instead of spending the first week organising files, ThomKat’s legal team spends it building a winning strategy based on the potential conflicts and timelines revealed by the AI. All performed inside a secure, permission-controlled, in-platform environment – without exposing a single document to external AI systems.
If you have comments, examples, challenges or workflows you’d like us to feature in Legal Ready’s AI Use Case Series, reply below or connect with us directly. We’re showcasing real ways lawyers can use Legal Ready to deliver safer, faster, more accurate legal work. Many thanks to Legal Ready‘s General Counsel, IP, AI and Privacy expert John Swinson for assistance in preparing this use case.