Legal Reference Library

High Court of Delhi Louis Vuitton v. Gaurav Bhatia and Ors. MANU/DE/1443/2017 23.05.2017 Intellectual Property Rights Damages have to be actual and not superfluous, Courts are not supposed to do guess work and grant damages Present suit has been filed by Plaintiff seeking permanent injunction against Defendants, restraining them from infringing its trademark, copyright and also from passing off goods of Plaintiff as that of theirs and for rendition of accounts and damages. It is submitted that, act of Defendant offering counterfeit products of Plaintiff which are identical to product of Plaintiff amounts to infringement of its trademark.  Suit has been filed by a duly authorized person. Various documents showing registration of trademark in favour of Plaintiff proves that, Plaintiff is registered owner of trademark Louis Vuitton and logo "Toile Monogram" pattern. Documents on record also conclusively show that, Defendants 1 and 2 have been indulg...

Holding that mere phonetic similarity is not sufficient to warrant judicial interference, the Bombay high court did not grant relief to owners of the London Dairy brand of ice cream who alleged trademark infringement by Indian candy-making company Parle Products. International Foodstuffs, a Dubai-based company in business since 1975, had moved the high court against Parle Products for using the mark 'Londonderry' for its boiled confectionary sweets, in an alleged bid to pass the candy off as being linked to the internationally well-known ice cream brand, 'London Dairy'. But after hearing both sides, Justice Gautam Patel in an interim order dismissed the plea to restrain Parle Products from using the name Londonderry for sweets - a product, he said, is "far removed from ice cream". The order comes as a sweet interim victory for Parle candy. The judge, in 16 pages of reasoning, said, "To begin with, there is a very great deal of controversy about whethe...

The Supreme Court has ruled that names of gods or holy books cannot be trademarked to sell goods and services. A bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice N V Ramana also said that allowing such a thing could offend people’s sensibilities. “There are many holy and religious books like Quran, Bible, Guru Granth Sahib, Ramayan, etc. The answer to the question as to whether any person can claim the name of a holy or religious book as a trademark for goods or services marketed by him is clearly ‘no’,” said the bench. The bench said as per the law, one cannot take advantage of gods and goddesses to sell products. The bench was hearing an appeal by Lal Babu Priyadarshi from Patna, who sought to trademark the word ‘Ramayan’ to sell incense sticks and perfumes. Priyadarshi appealed against the Intellectual Property Appellate Board’s decision in favour of one Amritpal Singh, who contended that ‘Ramayan’ can’t be registered as a trademark as the name of a religious book can’t be monopolised b...

The Supreme Court stated last week that a company cannot claim the right to a trade mark if it registers the name but does not use it for a long time. It would be assumed that the company, by its lethargic conduct, had abandoned its right. In this case, Neon Laboratories Ltd vs Medical Technologies Ltd, two pharma companies were disputing over the trade mark of similar sounding brand names. Medical Technologies argued that its product named Profol for the compound Propofol was being confused with that of Neon’s Rofol. Therefore it filed a suit alleging ‘passing off’. The trial court and the Gujarat High Court passed injunctions in its favour. Therefore, Neon approached Supreme Court. It dismissed the appeal stating that Neon had registered the name in 1992 but started marketing its brand only in 2004, much after the rival company launched its product in the market. The judgment stated that “t he Trade Marks Act does not permit the hoarding of or appropriation without utilisation of a t...

1)CIVIL APPEAL NOS.10643-10644 OF 2010, Indian Performing Rights Society Ltd. Vs. Sanjay Dalia & Anr. 2)Just Lifestyle Pvt. Ltd. vs Advance Magazine Publishers Inc (CA Nos 10643-10644/2010 with CA No 4912/2015 @ SLP (C) No 8253/2013) The Supreme Court, on 1 July 2015 has dismissed the appeals filed by the Indian Performing Rights Society Limited (IPRS) and Advance Magazine Publishers Inc (Advance Magazine) against orders of the High Court of Delhi, and held that if a plaintiff is residing or carrying on business at a place where the cause of action has also arisen, either wholly or in part, it has to file suit at that place. Both cases concerned the place of institution of the suit - the IPRS case is related to Section 62 of the Copyright Act 1957 (Copyright Act), while the Advance Magazine case is related to Section 134 of the Trade Marks Act 1999 (TM Act),