The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the High Court in the case of the rival WWF's. In World Wide Fund for Nature v. World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Inc., the terms of a settlement agreement between the parties was the subject of a dispute as to whether it constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade. The plaintiff in the action ("Fund") was previously known as the World Wildlife Fund and used the initials WWF since it was founded in 1961. The defendant ("Federation"), which was engaged in the sport of wrestling, had used the initials since 1983. At the beginning, there was no particular problem, but by the early 1990's, it became clear that there was a conflict caused by the parties' different uses of the same initials. Applications were being filed for trademarks by the Federation around the world as its business expanded beyond the United States and these were being opposed by Fund. Eventually, an agreement was entered into between the parties in 1994 to achieve a settlement. The agreement restricted the scope of Federation in its use of WWF, although it was allowed greater freedom of use within the United States.

The agreement was complied with for the first few years but subsequently Federation breached the terms of the agreement and, in particular, they set up a website with an URL www.wwf.com. Fund successfully brought an action for summary judgment for breach of contract. There was no serious dispute that Federation had breached the contract, but it tried to raise issues of public policy on the basis that the agreement constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade, both at common law and under Article 81 of the Treaty of Rome. The Court was not prepared to accept the arguments of Federation. When there was a genuine settlement between parties in a dispute over the extent of their trading rights, it was not necessary for Fund to have to prove that the agreement was reasonable. Instead, it was Federation that would need to show that the agreement was unreasonable if it wanted to avoid the consequences of the agreement's terms. It would have to show that, for instance, the dispute between the parties leading to the agreement was contrived or that there was no reasonable basis for the rights claimed, or it was in some other way contrary to the public interest.

The Court of Appeal accepted Mr. Justice Jacob's analysis that there is a threshold requirement before the doctrine of restraint of trade would apply. The restriction imposed by the agreement must clearly overreach the intellectual property right concerned. If a genuine settlement agreement has been entered into, it could only be challenged if the scope of the agreement was way beyond the protection that was afforded to the intellectual property rights. In dismissing the defense based on Article 81, the Court found that there was no material difference from the defense at common law and a defendant could not make out a case that the restraint had become more onerous when the reason for that was the breach of the agreement that the defendant had itself made.