Hello Readers!! There has been a lot that has been brewing over the past few weeks with respect to trademarks. We have decided to recapitulate the trademark news which have recently hit the headlines with our new segment, Weekly Trends. Let us take a quick look at what happened in the past weeks, with this weekly update.
Supreme Court to decide soon on a two decade old trademark dispute
On September 30th, 2016 the Supreme Court of India agreed to hear a twenty year old trademark dispute between Exide India and U. S based Exide Industries . The matter is scheduled for further hearing on January 17th, 2017. The trademark dispute is with reference to the exclusive rights over the use of the mark ‘ Exide’. India’s Exide Industries has been using the mark extensively for a couple of decades and the dispute arose after the U. S based industries started entering the Indian market post liberalization. India’s Exide industries eventually approached the Delhi High Court alleging infringement against the U. S based industries and the Single bench restrained Exide Technologies( U. S based Company) from using the mark ‘ Exide’. However, this order was set aside by a division bench of the same court comprising of Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Najmi Waziri. India’s Exide Industries appealed to the Supreme Court on September 30th against this order and the Supreme Court has decided to hear the matter on January 17th next year and till then has ordered the U. S based industries not to use the mark ‘ Exide’ on its products.
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Indian Firm restrained from using the Yahoo mark
The Delhi High Court has recently restrained an Indian firm, M/s Apricot Foods Pvt. Ltd (AFPL) from using the mark ‘ Yahoo’ with relation to its products as it amounts to infringement of the registered trademark of the US based Yahoo Inc. We already have discussed about this news in detail in our previous post. To access the previous post please click here.
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Delhi High Court grants injunction against Britannia industries
The Delhi High Court has recently granted an injunction against Britannia Industries in a suit filed by ITC Limited alleging violation of its packaging / trade dress rights. The FMCG giant ITC limited alleged the copying of the trade dress and colour combination of its Sunfeast Farmlite Digestive ALL GOOD’ biscuit packages by Britannia’s Nutrichoice Digestive Zero biscuit packages. Justice S Muralidhar stated the following in the interim order: “Britannia is granted four weeks to phase out existing stocks and maintain accounts.”
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Authored By- Sudha Sameekshya
Image is in Public Domain.
