{"id":101699,"date":"2024-04-15T11:24:23","date_gmt":"2024-04-15T05:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/?p=101699"},"modified":"2025-07-08T18:53:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T13:23:35","slug":"ceat-trademark-appeal-farmax-likelihood-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/ceat-trademark-appeal-farmax-likelihood-confusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Citing gross delay and strong likelihood of confusion, court refuses CEAT\u2019s appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Delhi High Court in a recent case dismissed an appeal by CEAT citing gross delay and strong likelihood of confusion. The Appellant, CEAT Limited filed an appeal against a refusal order issued by the Registrar of Trade Marks in respect of the Appellant’s TM application. The application was filed for the trademark \u201cFARMAX\u201d bearing the Trademark Application No. 3324395 in class 12 for goods such as \u2018agricultural vehicles, automobiles tyres; retreaded tyres; vehicle tyres; tyres for the wheels of forestry vehicles; tyres for land vehicles; parts and fittings for the aforesaid goods etc.\u2019. <\/em>The Registrar of Trade Marks had refused the mark \u201cFARMAX\u201d on the grounds of Section 11(1) based on its similarity with the prior registered marks \u201cFARMOX\u201d and \u201cFORMAX\u201d in class 12.<\/p>\n

In the appeal, the Appellant contended that the trademarks FARMAX, FARMOX, and FORMAX when seen as a whole are structurally and phonetically dissimilar. Further, the Appellant noted that the cited mark \u201cFARMOX\u201d has been registered for the \u2018use of scooters, motorcycles, tractors and motor like vehicles<\/em>\u2019 and the cited mark \u201cFORMAX\u201d has been registered for \u2018parts and fittings for use in motor land vehicles and tractors\u2019 <\/em>under class 12. The Appellant relied on the decision of the Supreme Court in Nandhini Deluxe vs. Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producers Federation Limited <\/em>to contend that \u201cTyres\u201d sold under the Appellant\u2019s mark are distinct from goods offered under the cited marks and the prior existence of the cited marks for the same class of goods cannot hinder the registration of the Appellant\u2019s trademark, since the nature of goods offered under the Appellant\u2019s mark is distinct from the cited marks. In response, the Registrar of Trade Marks (the Respondent herein) contended that the goods offered under the Appellant\u2019s mark and the cited marks were cognate and allied and related to vehicles and tractors.<\/p>\n

The Court firstly noted that the appeal filed by the appellant was grossly delayed (by 425 days) and the explanation offered in the condonation of delay application was specious, cursory, and flimsy, which could not find favor of the Court. The court then moved on to note that the Appellant\u2019s mark was structurally and phonetically similar to the cited marks. The Court also noted that the case of Nandhini Deluxe vs. Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producers Federation Limited <\/em>was irrelevant to the present case since the marks dealt with in the cited precedent were device marks bearing a generic word. In the present case, however, the marks \u201cFARMAX\u201d, \u201cFARMOX\u201d and \u201cFORMAX\u201d were coined marks and are not generic.\u00a0 The Court commented that it would be difficult to drive a distinction between vehicles’ tires, for which the appellant seeks registration, and automobiles, for which the cited marks had been registered as they are closely related and offered under marks causing a strong likelihood of confusion.<\/p>\n

The Court therefore proceeded to dismiss the appeal in favor of the Registrar Of Trade Marks.<\/p>\n

Citation<\/strong>: Ceat Limited vs The Registrar Of Trade Marks [C.A.(COMM.IPD-TM) 142\/2021 & I.A. 1466\/2023]<\/p>\n

Authored by Naika Salaria, Trademarks and Copyrights team, BananaIP Counsels<\/strong><\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/h4>\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\u00a0IP expert\/attorney<\/a>, please reach us at:\u00a0contact@bananaip.com<\/a>\u00a0or 91-80-26860414\/24\/34.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Delhi High Court dismissed CEAT\u2019s appeal against the refusal of its FARMAX trademark, citing substantial delay and likelihood of confusion with prior marks. The court found the marks similar and the goods closely related, upholding the Registrar\u2019s refusal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":21,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5495,6,11],"tags":[4738,486,12131,5,1047,12132,5592,5579],"class_list":["post-101699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-case-reviews","category-intellectual-property","category-trademarks","tag-ceat","tag-delhi-high-court","tag-farmax","tag-intellectual-property","tag-likelihood-of-confusion","tag-section-11","tag-trademark-appeal","tag-trademark-refusal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101699","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=101699"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144517,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101699\/revisions\/144517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}