A whisky brand that once topped the world\u2019s sales charts has spent over a decade in Indian courtrooms defending two words from imitators, and the latest round ended not with a trial, but with silence from the other side.<\/p>\n
Allied Blenders and Distillers Limited (\u201cAllied Blenders\u201d) owns the trademark \u201cOfficer\u2019s Choice,\u201d coined and adopted in 1988 and acquired by assignment in 1991, now registered across roughly 160 marks and variants, including in regional languages. The Delhi High Court had already declared \u201cOfficer\u2019s Choice\u201d a well-known trademark under Section 2(zg) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (\u201cTrade Marks Act\u201d) in 2017. Batra Breweries and Distilleries Private Limited (\u201cBatra Breweries\u201d), which also bottles whisky for Allied Blenders, began manufacturing and selling \u201cPrincipal Choice\u201d and \u201cPrincipal Choice Premium Whisky\u201d through an associated distributor, with trademark applications filed by a relative of one of that distributor\u2019s partners. Allied Blenders sued for permanent injunction and allied reliefs in 2023. The court granted a partial interim injunction restraining further manufacture in August 2023, confirmed it in December 2023, and proceeded the defendants ex parte in October 2024 after they failed to file a written statement despite an earlier condonation of delay. Allied Blenders then sought summary judgment on the unrebutted record.<\/p>\n
The court observed that once summons had been accepted and a written statement remained unfiled despite the earlier condonation of delay, no purpose would be served by insisting on formal evidence to establish what the unrebutted plaint already demonstrated. The court noted that this approach was consistent with the framework for summary adjudication available to the Intellectual Property Rights Division under the Delhi High Court Intellectual Property Rights Division Rules, 2022, and drew on established coordinate-bench reasoning that an undefended commercial suit should not be left to languish for want of formal proof when the material on record already sustains the claim. The court found that the defendants\u2019 silence, following their acceptance of summons, left the factual assertions in the plaint deemed admitted for the purpose of deciding the Officer\u2019s Choice trademark claim.<\/p>\n
The court reasoned that although \u201cOfficer\u2019s\u201d and \u201cChoice\u201d are ordinary English words individually, their combination as applied to whisky was arbitrary rather than descriptive, and had, through nearly four decades of continuous and extensive use, acquired distinctiveness and secondary meaning exclusively associated with Allied Blenders. The court held that the mark\u2019s 2017 declaration as a well-known trademark under Section 2(zg)<\/strong> of the Trade Marks Act, together with roughly 160 subsisting registrations spanning multiple regional languages, placed the Officer\u2019s Choice trademark in a category warranting broader protection than an ordinary mark. The court further observed that Allied Blenders\u2019 record of nearly 40 prior injunctions against differently prefixed \u201cChoice\u201d marks, ranging from \u201cSpecial Choice\u201d to \u201cMaster\u2019s Choice,\u201d was not incidental litigiousness but evidence of a mark that competitors persistently sought to imitate, reinforcing its reputation and goodwill.<\/p>\n The court stated that a side-by-side comparison of the parties\u2019 labels showed the defendants\u2019 packaging for \u201cPrincipal Choice Whisky\u201d replicated the overall trade dress of Allied Blenders\u2019 product, not merely the shared word \u201cChoice,\u201d a similarity the court found could not be explained as honest, independent adoption. The court opined that the defendants\u2019 own status as a bottler for Allied Blenders made the adoption of a confusingly similar mark harder to justify as coincidental. The court also noted that the defendants\u2019 pending trademark applications for \u201cPrincipal Choice Whisky\u201d had lapsed into abandonment by the time of the hearing, a circumstance from which the court drew the inference that the defendants no longer intended to pursue registration, further tilting the balance of convenience toward Allied Blenders.<\/p>\n In view of the observations and the arguments presented by both the parties, the Delhi High Court held that:<\/p>\nTrade Dress, Not Just Trademark<\/h3>\n
Findings<\/h2>\n
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