Trade marks: India
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Phonetically similar brand names
The Times of India, Apr 16 2016
HC: Phonetic similarity not enough to act in brand row
Swati Deshpande
Holding that mere phonetic similarity is not sufficient to warrant judicial interference, the Bombay high court did not grant relief to owners of the London Dairy brand of ice cream who alleged trademark infringement by candy-making company Parle Products. International Foodstuffs, a Dubai-based company in business since 1975, had moved the high court against Parle Products for using the mark `Londonderry' for its boiled confectionary sweets, in an alleged bid to pass the candy off as being linked to the ice cream brand, `London Dairy'.
But after hearing both sides, Justice Gautam Patel in an interim order dismissed the plea to restrain Parle from using the name Londonderry for sweets -a product, he said, is “far removed from ice cream“. The order comes as a sweet interim victory for Parle candy .
The judge, in 16 pages of reasoning, said, “There is a very great deal of controversy about whether the plaintiff (International Foodstuffs) does or does not have any entitlement to the mark in question.“
But that aside, he said the London Dairy mark is uniquely depicted as two distinct words on a ribbon that has a gold border and the word London is depicted against a London Bridge pictorial. Also, it is used only for ice cream.
The Parle company , on the other hand, uses its mark as a single word in a different colour scheme, with different fonts and background of a “splendid pastoral scene with well-fed farm animals roaming hither and yon and a winsome milkmaid in a flowing dress and an apron“.
Justice Patel said, “Is a court to ignore all these only because of a phonetic similarity? No law says that all this must be ignored, or that a solitary test of pronunciation will suffice to defeat all else that weighs against.“
