Premier Inn wins legal battle against Easygroup over ‘Rest easy’ tagline

Premier Inn has won a legal battle with Easygroup after the investment vehicle sued the Whitbread-owned budget hotel chain for trademark infringement.

Easygroup, the London-based venture capital conglomerate behind Easyhotel and Easyjet, accused Premier Inn of trademark infringement around its use of the phrase “Rest easy” in its branding.

The High Court dismissed these claims, with the judge in the case concluding: “Easygroup does not, in my judgement, have exclusivity in the hotels sphere for ‘easy’ of a kind which garners protection under trademark law.”

He added: “Even if Easygroup did somehow have exclusivity in the use of the word ‘easy’ within the hotels sphere, the use by Premier Inn of that word only in the phrase ‘Rest easy’ would not, in my judgement, dilute the word ‘easy’ when used alone. ‘Easy’ and ‘Rest easy’ do not mean the same thing and the average consumer would not understand them to mean the same thing, let alone in the context in which they were being used.”

The judge also described Easygroup as a “frequent litigator in protection of its trademarks”.

The Whitbread-owned hotel operator has been using the tag-line “Rest easy” in its advertising campaigns, website, social media pages and in-hotel signage since April 2021.

In September 2023, Easygroup brought the trademark infringement claim under the Trade Marks Act 1994 against Premier Inn, arguing its rival’s adoption of the phrase was “detrimental to the distinctive character of each of Easygroup’s marks”.

In its defence, Premier Inn submitted a large number of examples of the phrase “rest easy” being used in public-facing documents, one for each decade since 1800 to 2000 and thereafter 24 pieces of use since 2000.  

Lawyers for the hotel group added ‘easy’ is a “common descriptive word” that denotes “a quality or characteristic of goods and services, including hotel, hotel-related, travel and travel-related services, which has no or alternatively very low distinctiveness”.

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of the Easy family of brands, criticised the court’s decision for containing “clear errors of law” that he plans to overturn on appeal.

“If the above decision stays unchallenged in the Court of Appeal I will start a new business called Premier Hotels and get away with it,” he added.

A spokesperson for Premier Inn said: "We welcome today’s judgment - the judge has reached the right decision. We thank him for the detailed judgment he has handed down. Rest easy is a familiar and widely-used phrase in British culture, which encapsulates Premier Inn’s brand promise of consistency and reliability."

Premier Inn is the UK’s largest hotel brand with more than 840 hotels, having traded since 2007.