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Supreme Court: Proprietor Cannot Claim Monopoly Of Trade Mark Over The Entire Class Of Goods
The bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan in M/S Nandini Deluxe v. Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producer Federation Ltd., has held that proprietor does not have the right to claim monopoly of a trade mark over the entire class of goods.
FACTS
Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producer Federation Ltd. is in a business of producing and selling milk since 1985, it has a trade mark registered as ‘NANDINI’. M/S Nandini Deluxe, who runs a restaurant since 1989 applied for registration under the name ‘NANDHINI’. The deputy registrar accepted to allot the following trade mark to the restaurant but Intellectual Property Appellate Board rejected the permission granted by the Deputy registrar same was upheld by the HC. The grounds for rejecting the registration were:
- The mark NANDINI has become very famous and has a distinct identity in the eye of people.
- The another mark is similar to the NANDINI mark, except for the alphabet ‘H’ the spelling is same, the pronunciation of both the marks in the local language is same.
- One of the arguments presented by Nandini Deluxe were that the foundation is dealing under the mark since 1985 and only in milk, the class of products are completely different to each other. To this the Board held that there are no facts that can validate such claims.
The counsel appearing for Nandini deluxe while appearing before the bench argued that the federation is involved in a business which is completely. He referred to Vishnudas Trading Co. v. Vazir, it was held in the following case that monopoly regarding the trade mark extends to the goods under a particular class only, it does not extends to the whole class of goods which are of similar nature.
The court held that both the marks are not at all deceptively similar to each other. They maybe phonetically similar, but the logo of both the marks are very different. The logo of NANDINI has a cow in its background over which NANDINI is written inside an egg shaped circle. On the other hand the appellant has used Deluxe after NANDHINI which makes it different from the former mark. It is followed by the words ‘the real spice of life’ as well.
The bench referred to Vishnudas Kushandas, and observed that section 11 of the trade mark prohibits registration of trade mark in respect of similar goods or different goods, but it never prohibits same class of goods. The court restored the decision of the registrar and allowed the trade mark to be allotted to the Nandini deluxe, subject to all goods other than milk and milk products.
