{"id":483310,"date":"2026-05-13T22:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T22:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483310\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T22:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T22:37:10","slug":"website-targeted-irish-customers-with-ads-for-well-known-brands-court-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483310\/","title":{"rendered":"Website targeted Irish customers with ads for well-known brands, court hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A website facing legal action from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/easyjet\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/easyjet\/\">EasyJet<\/a> founder<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/stelios-haji-ioannou\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/stelios-haji-ioannou\/\"> Stelios Haji-Ioannou\u2019s Easygroup<\/a> targeted Irish customers with ads for Aer Lingus, Newbridge Silverware and other well-known brand names, the High Court heard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Easygroup and an Irish subsidiary claim that British-based easyfundraising Ltd and The Support Group (UK) Ltd wrongfully used trademarks registered in the EU to the Haji-Ioannou controlled business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ads for Aer Lingus, Newbridge Silverware, Dublin Airport, Irish Ferries and Destination Killarney all appeared on the easyfundraising Ltd website, Imogen McCarthy, Easygroup\u2019s counsel, told the court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">This shows \u201caccess and engagement with Irish retailers and Irish consumers\u201d, something that easyfundraising maintains it has not been doing, she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Lawyers for easyfundraising Ltd say the Irish courts have no jurisdiction to hear the case as the company is based in Britain and does not target customers in the Republic or EU.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The company argues that Easygroup cannot sue in courts here simply because people in the Republic or other EU states can access its website and that small numbers of them may have used it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Haji-Ioannou\u2019s group owns EasyFundraising.ie, through which customers book travel and accommodation deals while donating part of what they spend to the Red Cross.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Easyfundraising Ltd allows customers to buy goods and services and donate part of what they spend to charities that they select themselves from the website\u2019s menu.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">McCarthy pointed out that the company benefits from recruiting customers and charities, as it splits the commission paid to those organisations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Its engagement with Irish people and organisations \u201cis far beyond coincidental\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Easyfundraising Ltd has a \u201ctiny number\u201d of customers from the Republic and other EU countries, its counsel, Jonathan Newman, told the court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThere is no advertising in Ireland of the website,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Newman argued that the Irish businesses listed on the site sold their goods and services in the UK, while many of the charities involved were based in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">More than 98 per cent of easyfundraising Ltd\u2019s customers are based in Britain and the website is clearly aimed at UK customers, he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">None of the businesses or charities are involved in the litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A website facing legal action from EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou\u2019s Easygroup targeted Irish customers with ads for Aer&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,47459,18,10476,19,17,211361],"class_list":["post-483310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-easyjet","tag-eire","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-stelios-haji-ioannou"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116569666115514216","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}