Its IP Time

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Indian Courts Tuesday, July 21 ADS Spirits Pvt. Ltd. v. The Registrar of Trade Marks Delhi HC | Justice Jyoti Singh | Trademark | Registrability What happened: ADS Spirits appealed under Section 91 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 against the Registrar's order rejecting its application for the mark OFFER in Class 33 for alcoholic beverages. The Examination Report had objected under Section 9(1)(a), describing the mark, without specifying which category applied, as a common surname, personal name, geographical name, or non-distinctive geometrical figure. The final refusal rested on the ground that OFFER is commonly used to ask for a discount and is devoid of "uniqueness." Issue: Whether Section 9(1)(a) requires a mark to be "unique" to qualify for registration, and whether the Registrar had properly assessed distinctiveness of OFFER in relation to the specific goods, alcoholic beverages, given that the Appellant's reply, its list of 31 registered OFFE...

ANI, the news agency, sued Open AI alleging two distinct forms of copyright infringement. The training claim is that Open AI scraped and stored ANI's news articles to train the LLMs that power ChatGPT, and that the output or reproduction claim that ChatGPT generates responses to users that reproduce ANI's copyrighted content. Background ANI sought an interim injunction under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 CPC. Six intervenors joined the case. The Federation of Indian Publishers, the Digital News Publishers Association, and the Indian Music Industry supported ANI. Flux AI Labs, IGAP Project LLP, and the Broadband India Forum supported Open AI. Two amici curiae, Adarsh Ramanujan and Professor Arul George Scaria, assisted the court. Hearings ran from February 2025 through March 2026, spread across roughly twenty dates. Issues Framed by the Court The court framed four issues on 19 November 2024. Does storage of ANI's data for training ChatGPT infringe ...

On 13 July 2026, the Delhi High Court had to decide whether a Swiss footwear group could sell sneakers under a lower-case 'n' followed by a colon, and still say it wasn't trying to look like New Balance. Justice Jyoti Singh's answer, at the interim stage, was a qualified no. The judgment is a useful read for anyone advising on letter marks, logo variants, or the recurring question of whether a registered trademark can still be restrained through a passing off action. Here's a breakdown of the facts, the arguments, and the reasoning. Background: N-marks vs. n:marks New Balance Athletics Inc., the US footwear company tracing its history to the 1906 New Balance Arch Support Company, sued Astormueller AG (a Swiss corporation) and its two Indian subsidiaries over their NUBEAT sneaker line. New Balance's case rested on its family of "N-marks": the classic diagonal N device (registered in India since 1987), the shaded N logo (registered in Classes 18 and ...

Indian Courts Monday, 13th July, 2026 Loreal SA v. Vekariya Nikunj Arvindbhai & Ors. Delhi High Court | Trademarks | Amendment of Pleadings L'Oréal's passing-off suit over GARNIER BRIGHT COMPLETE, filed against traders it accused of selling near-identical GARUDA BRIGHT COMPLETE 30x and 6 DROPS BRIGHT COMPLETE 3x products, became a dispute about procedure rather than confusion this week. What happened: The GARNIER BRIGHT COMPLETE mark was still unregistered when L'Oréal filed suit in 2024, so the case rested purely on passing off. The registration matured in April 2025 while the suit was pending, and L'Oréal then sought to amend its plaint to add a claim for infringement. The Saket trial court refused in February 2026, reasoning that the subsequent registration created a fresh cause of action and that allowing the amendment after the plaintiff's evidence had closed would unwind the proceedings. Issue: Whether a trial court can refuse an amendment pleading...

Imagine Marketing Private Limited owns the boAt and BOAT trademarks, and it built a large audio and wearable business around that brand. Exotic Mile sells competing products under the mark BOULT, and the two companies have fought over that word since 2019. Imagine Marketing went back to the Delhi High Court this year and asked for a fresh interim injunction against the bare wordmark BOULT, a relief its first application never secured. Justice Jyoti Singh dismissed the attempt, and her order in Imagine Marketing Pvt Ltd v Exotic Mile draws a sharp line around how many times a plaintiff can ask a court for the same relief. Struggling to understand basics of trademark law? Click here What the boAt vs BOULT Dispute Has Always Been About Imagine Marketing coined the boAt brand in 2014 and built it into one of India's largest audio and wearable brands, selling earphones, headphones and speakers under the boAt name and its triangular logo. Exotic Mile has sold competing gadgets under t...

The Delhi High Court recently examined a problem that troubles trademark litigants across the country. A plaintiff files a suit for passing off because the mark stands unregistered at that point in time, and the registration comes through later, sometimes years into the litigation. The plaintiff then wants to add a claim for infringement to the same suit rather than starting a fresh one. In Loreal SA v. Vekariya Nikunj Arvindbhai and Ors , Justice Jyoti Singh addressed this question and set aside a trial court order that had refused such an amendment. Loreal Garnier Bright Trademark Dispute Loreal SA adopted the mark GARNIER BRIGHT COMPLETE along with a distinctive trade dress for its facial and skincare products in September 2020, and it built substantial goodwill around the mark through continuous use and promotion of its products. Loreal later found that the respondents were manufacturing and selling cosmetic products under the marks GARUDA BRIGHT COMPLETE 30x and 6 DROPS BRIGHT ...

Zippy Edible Products Private Limited manufactures soya chaap, pasta and other food items from its facility in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand. Veer Ji Malai Chaap, a fast growing vegetarian food chain, sourced products from Zippy through most of 2025. The relationship broke down in November 2025 when Veer Ji stopped placing orders. What did not stop was Veer Ji's use of a promotional video it filmed inside Zippy's factory, a video that showed Zippy's machinery, automation and hygiene systems as if they belonged to Veer Ji. Zippy dragged Veer Ji Foods Private Limited and its promoters to the Delhi High Court, and Justice Jyoti Singh delivered a sharp interim order that food brands across India need to study. What Happened Between Zippy Edible Products and Veer Ji Malai Chaap Zippy runs an FSSAI certified manufacturing unit in Rudrapur that produces soya chaap, pasta and pre-gelatinised rice for restaurant chains and retail buyers across India. Veer Ji Malai Chaap built its reputa...