The Plaintiff, Sterling Agro Industries Limited, has been selling \u2018Desi ghee and other dairy products\u2019 under their mark \u201cNOVA\u201d since 1992 and had duly registered their trademarks including the variants of the mark \u201cNOVA\u201d in class 29. The Plaintiff filed a suit seeking permanent injunction against the Defendant to restrain them from using the mark \u201cNOVYA\u201d to sell \u2018Ghee and other dairy products\u2019 along with the Defendant\u2019s deceptively similar packaging. In response, the Defendant ASR Trading Company denied all claims of the Plaintiff and relied on their trademark application for their mark \u201cNOVYA\u201d in class 29 to assert that the mark \u201cNOVYA\u201d was being used for goods other than just \u2018Ghee\u2019.<\/p>\n
After reviewing the facts, the Court observed that the mark \u201cNOVYA\u201d is similar to the Plaintiff\u2019s mark \u201cNOVA\u201d and that the packaging of the Defendant\u2019s products is also deceptively similar to the Plaintiff\u2019s product packaging. The Court further noted that the Defendant had abandoned the trademark application filed for the mark \u201cNOVYA\u201d under class 29. Additionally, the Court stated that the intentional adoption of the deceptively similar mark \u201cNOVYA\u201d by the Defendant for selling \u2018Ghee\u2019 and its inability to produce substantial evidence of not using the mark as well as similar packaging to sell \u2018Ghee\u2019 amounts to bad faith.<\/p>\n
Therefore, the Court held that the use of the mark \u201cNOVYA\u201d for selling products like \u2018Ghee and other dairy products\u2019 amounts to passing off and infringement of the Plaintiff\u2019s registered trademark \u201cNOVA\u201d. While passing a permanent injunction against the Defendant, the Court also imposed a penalty of INR 5,00,000\/- on the Defendant for contempt.<\/p>\n
Citation: Sterling Agro Industries Limited vs M\/s ASR Trading Company & Ors., Delhi High Court, 7 February, 2024, CS(COMM) 148\/2019, I.A. 4158\/2019<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The case note\/s in this blog post have been written by IP Attorneys at BananaIP Counsels based on their review and understanding of the Judgments. It may be noted that other IP attorneys and experts in the field may have different opinions about the cases or arrive at different conclusions therefrom. It is advisable to read the Judgments before making any decisions based on the case notes.<\/p>\n If you have any questions, or if you wish to speak with an IP expert\/attorney<\/a>, please reach us at: contact@bananaip.com<\/a> or 91-80-26860414\/24\/34.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Delhi High Court ruled that selling ghee under the mark NOVYA constitutes passing off and infringement of the registered NOVA trademark. The Court\u2019s decision imposed a permanent injunction and penalty on the Defendant for contempt, highlighting the importance of trademark protection in the dairy sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":42,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5495,6,11],"tags":[5341,486,12086,5578,12085,1160,12087,41],"class_list":["post-100808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-case-reviews","category-intellectual-property","category-trademarks","tag-deceptive-similarity","tag-delhi-high-court","tag-ghee-dispute","tag-indian-trademark-law","tag-nova-trademark","tag-passing-off","tag-sterling-agro-industries","tag-trademark-infringement-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100808"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144418,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100808\/revisions\/144418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Disclaimer<\/h5>\n