[Spencer]

ITV have never seemed to put much effort into protecting some of their older company brands when the new one-man-bands have decided to buy out the name to trade off the history. So whether they'd consider it worth putting up much of a fight around the UTV brand which, although still technically active, they've already massively downplayed in recent years is debatable. If anything they might just use this as a good reason to finish it off completely and reposition the few remaining bits under ITV rather than risk getting into brand confusion territory.

In all likelyhood UKTV will have registered any relevant trademarks for the new plans anyway before announcing this publicly to stop any squatters, so if ITV were going to object on that ground they'd have received a notification due to being in similar classes and done it then.

It doesn't always work like that. Radio Exe weren't notified when Global launched Radio X, and in the end a deal had to be reached between the two.

And I think there's a big difference between someone reusing an old, defunct brand like TVS or Associated Rediffusion that ITV chose not to keep registered, and someone potentially infringing on a current, active brand, even if it's not quite as prominent as it was a few years ago.