A trademark nurtured over nearly four decades, backed by more than Rs. 10,000 crore in annual sales, faced a challenge from a rival that had added little more than a single letter and a colour scheme borrowed wholesale. The Bombay High Court was called upon to decide whether that alteration was enough to escape a claim of SUPREME trademark infringement.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Industries Limited (\u201cSupreme Industries\u201d) conceived and adopted the trade mark \u201cSUPREME\u201d in 1987 for its plastic products, later making the mark its house mark and part of its corporate identity. It secured eleven registrations across Classes 17 and 19, the earliest dating to 2003, and registered copyright in a stylised artwork created in 1997 that paired the word \u201cSUPREME\u201d with the tagline \u201cPeople who know plastics best.\u201d Moorthi Rabeha (\u201cRabeha\u201d), a manufacturer and seller of PVC pipes since 2015, held registration for the mark \u201cSUPREMES GOLD\u201d with an \u201cSG\u201d logo, granted on 25 November 2021. Supreme Industries discovered this registration during a routine trademark registry search in June 2024, filed a rectification application seeking cancellation, and subsequently instituted Commercial IP Suit No. 336 of 2024 after encountering Rabeha\u2019s actual goods in the market in October 2024. The Interim Application seeking injunctive relief was reserved on 12 December 2025 and pronounced on 19 January 2026.<\/p>\n
The court noted that the applicable test for SUPREME trademark infringement under Section 29 turns on the broad and essential features of the rival marks, not a side-by-side hunt for differences, drawing on the Supreme Court\u2019s guidance in Parle Products Private Limited v. J.P. & Co.<\/em> (1972 (1) SCC 618). The court observed that the products in question, plastic pipes and fittings, are goods of common use bought by consumers of average intelligence and imperfect recollection, a class particularly susceptible to being misled by overall impression rather than photographic detail. The court found that Rabeha\u2019s mark \u201cSUPREMES GOLD\u201d reproduced the stylised depiction of \u201cSUPREME\u201d identically for the word \u201cSUPREMES,\u201d relegating \u201cGOLD\u201d and the \u201cSG\u201d logo to a subordinate, easily ignored position. The court further observed that Rabeha\u2019s own written statement conceded customers would refer to the product as \u201cSUPREMES GOLD\u201d rather than by the \u201cSG\u201d logo, undercutting the claim that the logo distinguished the marks. The court also noted a discrepancy between the green colour in which Rabeha\u2019s mark stood registered and the red colour in which it was actually used, mirroring Supreme Industries\u2019 colour scheme, a factor the court treated as indicative of dishonest adoption.<\/p>\n The court held that although Section 28 ordinarily entitles a registered proprietor to use its own mark, this protection is not absolute, and reasoned that the Full Bench ruling in Lupin Ltd. v. Johnson and Johnson<\/em> (2015 (1) Mh.L.J. 501) permits interlocutory scrutiny where a registration is ex facie illegal, fraudulent, or shocks the conscience of the court. The court found that the Registrar\u2019s examination report had treated Supreme Industries\u2019 marks as merely \u201cconflicting\u201d without applying the essential-feature test, and that Supreme Industries\u2019 label mark stood registered without any disclaimer, a circumstance that ought to have prompted caution before granting Rabeha\u2019s registration. On this basis, the court concluded that Rabeha\u2019s registration was prima facie ex facie illegal, a finding central to the SUPREME trademark infringement claim surviving Rabeha\u2019s own registration defence.<\/p>\n The court reasoned that Section 17, which denies exclusivity over a mere part of a composite mark, had no application here because Supreme Industries\u2019 label mark consisted of nothing beyond the stylised word \u201cSUPREME\u201d itself, leaving no separate \u201cpart of the whole\u201d to analyse. The court opined that Rabeha, having herself sought and secured registration incorporating \u201cSUPREME,\u201d was estopped from arguing the word was generic or descriptive, particularly as no evidence of genuine third-party use was placed on record despite the claim of 500 similarly named companies. Applying the principles on passing off recently restated by the Supreme Court in Pernod Ricard India Private Limited v. Karanveer Singh Chhabra Trading<\/em> (2025 SCC OnLine SC 1701), the court found that Supreme Industries had established goodwill through decades of use and substantial sales, that Rabeha\u2019s adoption without any trademark search constituted misrepresentation, and that a likelihood of confusion and consequent damage to Supreme Industries\u2019 reputation existed.<\/p>\n In view of the observations and the arguments presented by both the parties, the Bombay High Court held that:<\/p>\nPiercing a Registration That Is Ex Facie Illegal<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Section 17 and the Passing Off Claim<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Findings<\/h2>\n
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