The Supreme Court today sought the response of a firm to a plea filed by consumer goods company Zydus Wellness challenging an order of the Delhi high court which held that it can’t use the brand name “SugarLite” for its products.
A vacation bench of Justices JK Maheshwari & PS Narasimha issued a notice to the firm named Delhi Marketing that sought its reply within 3 weeks.
The apex court heard an appeal filed by Zydus Wellness against the May 12 order of the high court which constrain it from using the brand name “SugarLite” as Delhi Marketing that held rights to use the brand name “SUGARLITE”.
Furthermore, the firm alleged that Zydus used a falsely similar trademark to confuse the customers and sought directions to restrain the company that manufactures nutrition & skin care products from using the ‘SugarLite’ brand name.
Initially, Delhi Marketing moved a trial court in 2020 seeking a permanent injunction for using the trademark SugarLite or any other similar or deceptively similar mark as that of its registered trademark.
However, the trial court declined the request for an injunction and held that the two marks weren’t only different in appearance but also related to a different class of products. The court stated that the manner in which the parties were trading was no likelihood of confusion.
While setting aside the trial court’s judgment against Delhi Marketing, the high court held Zydus knowingly adopted a similar brand name ‘SugarLite’ despite knowing fully well that Delhi Marketing owned it.
Afterwards, the high court noted that the trial court “arbitrarily, capriciously and perversely, completely ignoring the documents on record, passed the impugned order against the settled principles of law”.
The high court said that “The act of respondent adopting and using the identically similar mark ‘SugarLite’ as that of the trademark ‘SUGARLITE’ of the appellant even though in a different Class, does not exude confidence.”
