What happens when a foreign manufacturer hands its Indian agent the right to register a trademark, and then quietly authorizes a competitor to sell the same goods in India under the same brand? The answer to this lies in the present case as decided by the Delhi High Court.<\/p>\n
Products and Ideas India Pvt. Ltd. (“PI Pvt. Ltd.”) signed an Exclusive Agency Agreement (“EAA”) with Stella Industrial Co. Ltd. (“SIC \/ SIC Ltd.”), a Taiwanese-Chinese maker of commercial induction cookers, in April 2017. The EAA made PI Pvt. Ltd, SIC Ltd’s sole agent in India for distributing, selling and promoting STELLA-branded cookers, and gave it the authority to decide how those cookers would be branded for the Indian market.<\/p>\n
PI Pvt. Ltd. sold the cookers under the mark STELLADEXIN, an English version of SIC’s Chinese mark, and registered the word mark under Section 23 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (“the Act”) in Classes 7, 9 and 11 with effect from February 2022. It also held a copyright registration for the STELLADEXIN logo from July 2024. By 2022-2023, annual sales under the mark had reached \u20b916.27 crores.<\/p>\n
In June 2024, PI Pvt. Ltd. found that Nilkamal Limited (“Nilkamal”) and its joint venture Cambro-Nilkamal Pvt. Ltd. (“Cambro-Nilkamal”) were selling induction cookers under the STELLA mark on their website. PI Pvt. Ltd. sued for trademark infringement under Section 29(2)(b) of the Act and obtained an ex parte ad interim<\/em> injunction from a Single Judge in August 2024. SIC, appearing as Respondent 5, fought back. It claimed to have sold branded goods in India through M\/s Mittal International since 2013, years before PI Pvt. Ltd.’s first recorded sale in 2017 and well before its 2022 registration. SIC Ltd. also announced that it had terminated the EAA in November 2024. In July 2025, the Single Judge sided with SIC and Cambro-Nilkamal, vacating the injunction on the basis of prior continuous user under Section 34 and international exhaustion under Section 30(3) of the Act. Aggrieved by this decision, PI Pvt. Ltd. filed the present appeal.<\/p>\n The court noted that the defence under Section 34 is not triggered by isolated sales. It requires continuous<\/em> use of the mark in India, predating both the plaintiff’s registration and the plaintiff’s first use. Continuous means exactly that – an unbroken record of commercial activity, not a handful of transactions spread over several years.<\/p>\n SIC produced four invoices from 2012 to 2016. Two of them made no mention of STELLA or STELLADEXIN and were therefore irrelevant to proving use of those marks. The other two were proforma invoices. Following Karn Vir Mehta v. Collector of Customs<\/em> (1997 SCC OnLine Ker 238), the court confirmed that a proforma invoice is only a tentative offer of sale and does not prove that goods actually changed hands. Taken together, the four invoices could not demonstrate the continuous, unbroken use that Section 34 demands<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n The court also made an important territorial point. SIC’s use of the mark in China counted for nothing in an Indian infringement action. Foreign use is only relevant in passing off cases<\/strong><\/span> where the plaintiff argues that the mark’s overseas reputation has spilled into India. PI Pvt. Ltd. made no such argument. Applying the appellate review standard from Wander India Ltd v. Antox (India) P. Ltd<\/em> (1990 Supp (1) SCC 727) and Pernod Ricard v. Karanveer Singh Chhabra<\/em> (2025 SCC OnLine SC 1701), the Division Bench held that the Section 34 finding could not stand.<\/p>\n The Single Judge had taken a shortcut: if SIC was not an infringer, neither was Cambro-Nilkamal. The Division Bench rejected this approach for two reasons.<\/p>\n First, the Section 34 finding that protected SIC had already fallen away. Second, and more fundamentally, a reseller’s liability is not inherited from its supplier<\/strong><\/span>. Section 29(6)(c) makes clear that importing goods into India under another’s registered trademark is itself an act of use, and therefore an act of infringement<\/strong><\/span>. Cambro-Nilkamal’s own act of importation was enough to attract liability, regardless of what SIC had or had not done.<\/p>\n The international exhaustion argument under Section 30(3) also failed, and the reason is straightforward. Section 30(3) protects a person who deals in goods that the proprietor of a registered trade mark<\/em> has lawfully placed on the market. But what does “registered trade mark” mean in this context?<\/p>\n The Act answers its own question. Section 2(w) defines “registered trade mark” as a mark on the Indian register and remaining in force. Section 2(t) defines “register” as the Indian Register of Trade Marks maintained under Section 6. A mark registered in China, or anywhere else outside India, simply does not qualify. The court had examined Section 30(3) in similar detail in Western Digital Technologies Inc. v. Geonix International (P) Ltd.<\/em> (2026 SCC OnLine Del 901) and reached the same conclusion.<\/p>\n Applied to the facts: SIC had no Indian trademark registration. PI Pvt. Ltd. was the only registered proprietor in India. Cambro-Nilkamal was not importing with PI Pvt. Ltd.s’ consent. Section 30(3) had no application whatsoever.<\/p>\n The Single Judge’s view, that any person may freely import goods bearing any entity’s trademark into India, was expressly rejected as wrong in law. The <\/strong>right to import under a registered mark belongs to the Indian registered proprietor alone, or to anyone that proprietor specifically authorises.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In view of the observations and the arguments presented by both the parties, the Delhi High Court (Division Bench) held that:<\/p>\nIssues Before the Court<\/h2>\n
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PI Pvt. Ltd.’s Arguments<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Cambro-Nilkamal and SIC’s Arguments<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Court’s Observations and Analysis<\/h2>\n
Four Invoices do not make Continuous Use<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Each Infringer’s Liability stands on its Own<\/strong><\/h3>\n
“Registered Trade Mark” means Registered in India<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Findings<\/h2>\n
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