Article
Recycle with care
By Pulkit Doger and Niharika Tiwari
The article in this issue of L&S IPR Amicus discusses a peculiar situation where a trademark of one proprietor is found to be infringed by another, by use of recycled bottles or containers of that proprietor for sale of goods or products by the latter in those recycled containers. Elaborately analysing a recent Delhi High Court decision, it navigates through the applicability of the statutory provisions in a case when recycled beer bottles of one proprietor were used by another by re-labelling them when the proprietor’s trademark was embossed on such bottles. Holding that such sale resulted in infringement and passing off, the Court also directed the Defendant to exercise a greater degree of supervision at their manufacturing plant and conduct random checks and inspections to ensure that the bottles used in its manufacturing plant do not, in any manner, bear the mark of the plaintiff. Discussing few other case law, the authors point out that users of recycled products must apply a higher degree of caution while using recycled products to ensure that they do not even might inadvertently infringe the trademark of some other party…
Ratio decidendi
- Patents – Amendment to claims on directions of Controller – Filing of Form 13 and notice to opponent not required – Delhi High Court
- Patents – Bar of patentability under Section 3(d) – Non-identification of ‘known substance’ is fatal – Delhi High Court
- Trademark – Use of mark ‘Tata’ – Targeting in India by foreign company’s website – Delhi High Court
- Process patent – Use of different reagent with different sequence of reaction is significant enough to fall out of rigours of Doctrine of Equivalents – Delhi High Court
- Trademarks – Device marks – Phonetic identicality is not enough – Delhi High Court
News Nuggets
- Not providing reasons for rejecting application for grant of patent is fatal
- Trademark disparagement – Not open for advertiser to send a message that quality of goods of his competitor is bad
- Trademarks ‘Steelbird’ and ‘Seabird’ are phonetically similar
- Trademarks ‘Carlsberg’ and ‘Tensberg’ are deceptively similar
- Trademarks ‘ZIPOD’ and ‘ZOYPOD’ are deceptively similar – Dissimilarity in packing is not relevant
- Trademark infringement by passing of old and used goods of plaintiff as new products of defendant, after tampering with labels
