On 31 January 2026, a single judge of the Delhi High Court restrained Dabur from selling Cool King Thanda Tael in packaging deceptively similar to Emami's Navratna oil, reaffirming that trade-dress imitation is assessed on the totality of essential features.
Delhi HC IP-Division Single Judge (Tejas Karia J.) upheld an interim injunction restraining Flipkart from using 'MARQ' and 'MARQ by Flipkart' for electronics, holding the mark phonetically, structurally and visually similar to prior-user Marc Enterprises' 'MARC' and that addition of the Flipkart house mark could not cure the deception.
On 10 June 2020 Justice C. Saravanan of the Madras High Court Original Side, in ITC Limited v. Nestle India Ltd, dismissed ITC's passing-off action against Nestle's use of 'Magical Masala' on Maggi noodle packaging. The judgment holds that 'Magic Masala' and 'Magical Masala' are laudatory and descriptive — 'magic' and 'magical' are common laudatory epithets, 'masala' is a generic flavour descriptor — and that neither party used these terms as trade-mark identifiers. The dominant marks were 'Sunfeast Yippee!' and 'Maggi'; the disputed phrases functioned as flavour-variant descriptors. A close reading of the descriptive-use vs trade-mark-use distinction, the post-Marico v. Agro Tech architecture for laudatory marks, and what the judgment tells brand owners about packaging hierarchy.
On 6 May 2004, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India — Ruma Pal, J. and P. Venkatarama Reddi, J. — held that a domain name is more than a mere internet address; it functions as a business identifier capable of trade-mark protection under the Trade Marks Act 1999 and the common-law tort of passing off. The Court reversed the Karnataka High Court Division Bench and restored the City Civil Judge Bangalore's interim injunction against Siffynet Solutions in favour of Satyam Infoway. A close reading of the territoriality of cyberspace question, the classical trinity test applied to coined word marks, the dicta on the UDRP and ICANN architecture and the foundational role of the judgment in the .in INDRP framework.
On 14 December 2017 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha v. M/S Prius Auto Industries Ltd, affirmed the Delhi High Court Division Bench's reversal of an ad-interim injunction in favour of Toyota and dismissed Toyota's appeal. The judgment, authored by Justice Ranjan Gogoi for himself and Justice Navin Sinha, holds that trans-border reputation under Indian passing-off law is governed by the territoriality principle — a foreign mark must demonstrate substantial spillover goodwill in Indian territory at the relevant date, here April 2001, and the classical trinity of goodwill, misrepresentation and damage applies even where the mark is globally famous. The judgment reads down Whirlpool (1996) and Milmet Oftho (2004) without overruling them and aligns Indian law with the English Starbucks (HK) approach. A close reading of the judgment's procedural posture, the territoriality holding, and what practitioners should plead in trans-border reputation suits.