Indian Supreme Court fails to hit the bottle


The IPKat has learnt from Times of India that lovers of finest Indian whisky can breath a sigh of relief. The Indian Supreme Court has ruled that Indian distiller Khoday India Ltd remains at liberty to sell its whisky under the Peter Scot name. In a case which took only 20 years to proceed through the Indian judicial system, the Scotch Whisky Association challenged the Peter Scot trade marks, which was registered in 1974. Khoday argued that because the SWA waited 13 years to challenge the trade mark, its claim was time-barred.

Reports don't make it clear whether the Supreme Court decided in Khoday's favour because consumers just wouldn't be confused, or because the SWA waited so long to bring its action. The IPKat though can see the merits of the reasoning based on lapse of time. If an IP owner knows that someone else may be infringing its IP, but stands by and watches as that someone invests extensively in a business built on that IP, it is unconscionable for the IP owner to decide to challenge the business at a much later date.
Indian Supreme Court fails to hit the bottle Indian Supreme Court fails to hit the bottle Reviewed by Anonymous on Friday, May 30, 2008 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. Dear Ilanah,

    The decision was based more on "delay" and consequent "acquiescence/waiver".

    Nonetheless, Justice Sinha of the Indian SC (who wrote this judgment) also suggests a lack of "confusion" in the light of the existence of "sophisticated" Scotch whisky consumers in India--though he does not elaborate much on this point.

    We have blogged on this case on SpicyIP: http://spicyipindia.blogspot.com/2008/05/indian-supreme-court-on-ip-roll-scotch.html

    Thanks,

    Shamnad

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.