Skip to main content

Posts

Digital Storefronts Define Trademark Jurisdiction, Rules Delhi HC

Rukhmani Keshwani v. Raju Agarbatti Works & Anr. , FAO (COMM) 99/2024 (Delhi High Court, Division Bench, decided 01.07.2026) Why This Case Matters For any business that sells through a website, a marketplace listing, or a platform like IndiaMart, Amazon, or Etsy, this ruling answers a question that keeps coming up in Indian IP litigation: can you be sued for trademark or copyright infringement in a city where you have no office, no warehouse, and no employee — simply because your goods are listed online and reachable there? The Delhi High Court's answer, reaffirming and extending its own recent line of authority, is yes — provided the online listing shows purposeful commercial targeting , not mere passive accessibility. Actual completed sales are not required. This has direct consequences for how foreign and domestic manufacturers, franchisors, and e-commerce sellers should think about litigation risk exposure across Indian jurisdictions. The Dispute in Brief R...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

The Jurisdiction Battle in Trademark Rectification: How Two Delhi High Court Rulings Exposed a Post-IPAB Fault Line

  Introduction When the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 abolished the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), it did more than shut down a specialised forum — it quietly reopened a question the trademark statute had never clearly answered: which High Court can hear a rectification or cancellation petition when the mark was registered somewhere else entirely? For decades, this question had a settled, almost mechanical answer. Under the Trade and Merchandise Marks Act, 1958, "High Court" was expressly defined by reference to the Trade Marks Registry's territorial reach, and the IPAB later organised its own benches around the same logic. But the Trade Marks Act, 1999 — the statute now in force — dropped that definition. For years, this omission went unnoticed because the IPAB's own administrative structure papered over the gap. Its abolition in 2021 removed that scaffolding, and the underlying ambiguity surfaced almost immediately, generating conflicting arguments ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Prior Disclosure, Fatal Consequences: Delhi High Court Summarily Dismisses Design Infringement Claim but Preserves Passing Off in Composite Suit

 Summary The Delhi High Court granted summary judgment under Order XIII-A CPC dismissing Novamax Industries' design infringement claim in respect of Design No. 322384-002, after pre-filing sales invoices and the plaintiff's own website were found to have published the cooler design several months before the design application was filed on 19 October 2019. Applying Section 19(1)(b) of the Designs Act, 2000, the Court held the design vulnerable to cancellation and found no real prospect of success on infringement. However, the Court declined to dismiss the passing off claim, holding that the plaint's averments on misrepresentation and likelihood of confusion required trial. The judgment reaffirms that a design proprietor's pre-filing commercial activity constitutes a fatal, self-inflicted bar to enforcement of the resulting registration, while confirming that passing off survives the collapse of the statutory infringement claim. Introduction Delhi  High Court , presided b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Foreign Filing Disclosure in India on Form 3: A Practitioner’s Guide to Disclosure and Risk Management

1.   Introduction Section 8 of the Patents Act, 1970 (“the Act”) and the corresponding provisions of the Patents Rules, 2003 (“the Rules”), particularly Rules 12(1), 12(1A), 12(2), 12(3) and 12(4), impose a continuing obligation on patent applicants to keep the Controller of Patents informed about applications for the same or substantially the same invention filed in countries outside India. This obligation is discharged primarily through Form 3 — the Statement and Undertaking prescribed under the Act. Non-compliance with Section 8 remains one of the most frequently invoked grounds for pre-grant opposition, post-grant opposition, and revocation of a patent in India. A thorough understanding of the scope, timing, and content of this obligation is therefore essential for every patent practitioner. 2.   Section 8(1)(a) read with Rules 12(1) and 12(1A) — Initial Statement and Undertaking 2.1   Statutory Provision Under Section 8(1)(a) of the Act, read with Rule ...
Post a Comment
Read more