This post brings to light some of the Indian cases dealing with trademark infringement in the automobile industry.
The first case that would be discussed here is that of Tata Motors. The story starts in mid 2014, when Tata Motors approached the Court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Vidya Prakash, complaining of some unknown persons engaged in the business of manufacturing, trading, distributing, storing and selling counterfeit and spurious products under the trademark of ‘Tata Motors’.
Tata Motors informed the Court…
Brands – the backbone of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) valuation
William Shakespeare once said “What's in a name?”
For FMCG companies, it’s all about the product names that consumers identify from the TV advertisements or trips to the supermarket. It is critical to your business because:
It’s a marketing tool; brand recall leads to greater sales and profitability
It strengthens your licensing opportunities and therefore revenue from distributors/partners
It increases your company’s valuation, leading to…
This post exhibits the statistics of IP litigation in India in the past decade.
The following table displays the statistics that were arrived at after conducting a search on Manupatra . It tabulates the estimated number of decisions passed by the Supreme Court and High Courts with respect to patents, trademarks and copyrights in the past decade.
IP Decisions Passed by SC and HCs from 2004 – 2014
Year
Number of Decided Cases for Patent
Number of Decided Cases for Trademark
Number of…
The American presidential race has always been interesting, and the present one is no exception. Undoubtedly the most interesting candidate of all is Donald Trump. The highly opinionated, often loud-mouthed star of The Apprentice, who finds it hard to stay away from the spotlight is in the news again. This time Donald Trump is ‘firing’ a politically oriented clothing website which has been using Trump’s trademarked name in its domain name.
The domain name in question, Stoptrump.us, sells t-shirts and…
Flipkart was again in the news recently. The e-commerce company sent a legal notice to a Hyderabad based blogger, Amit Bhawani, for the infringement of it trademark/logo and cyber squatting.
Seems like a garden variety case of trademark infringement right? Not quite. Mr Bhawani who is technology blogger with sites like ‘Phone Radar’ and ‘Android Advices’, also ran a website called ‘amazonvsflipkart.com’. As the name suggests the website hosted a ‘customer satisfaction poll’ pitting Flipkart and Amazon against each other,…
Recently the Internet domain registrar, GoDaddy had its Oscar-worthy moment, winning against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (‘Academy’ for brevity). The Academy had accused the Scottsdale, Arizona based company of cyber squatting.
Originally filed in 2010, the lawsuit was filed by the Academy, stating that GoDaddy was allowing its customers "to “park” their pages and share in the revenue" collected from the advertisements on the said pages. Further the Academy stated that the internet domain registrar had…
Delhi based TT Industries, established in 1955, has managed to restrain the famous German auto maker Audi from using the mark “TT” from selling sporting articles, accessories, bags, leather and faux leather goods, or toy cars in India.
TT Industries proprietor Rikab Chand Jain, filed a plaint after being aware of, Audi AG using the mark TT, to promote and sell their goods. TT Industries claims to deal in fashion and export textiles, agro-products, ready-made garments, textile piece goods, hosiery…
Recently the Times of India reported that IndiGo Airlines, one of the premier airline companies operating from India, with more than 100 flights daily, had landed in a trademark dispute with Tata Motors, another automobile giant and proprietors of the car TATA INDIGO. It is interesting to note that although Inter Globe (Prorpietors of IndiGo Airlines) and Tata Motors have been disputing for the past ten years, before the Indian Trademark Office, the news of the existence of such a dispute has…
Choosing the right name/business representation word, logo, device or any other form of business representation is generally the first asset created by an entrepreneur, Often, entrepreneurs finalize on a name or logo and develop strong emotional attachment to it without proper research. While it is important to be passionate about the business and its representation, every entrepreneur must take the following steps before finalizing on a business representation: Ensure that the name, logo or any other representation shortlisted is capable…
Google's announcement that it would be using the house mark “ALPHABET” for its holding company sparked off a series of debates about trademark implications of using the said word. While numerous companies operate under the name "ALPHABET" as a part of their name, the leader of these companies seems to be BMW. BMW's representative has stated that Alphabet, a fleet services company operated by BMW is an important part of its business, and that BMW is considering the issue at…