Dabur Oil intentionally designs its bottle to grab the market of Parachute Oil: HC

The High Court in the full text of a verdict has given findings that the authority of the 'Dabur Gold Pure Coconut Oil' has designed its product including using blue colour on the bottle intentionally to grab some portion of the market of the Parachute Coconut Oil and Parachute Advansed Hair Oil.
The court said, "The splash of broken coconut, as used by the defendant (authority of the Dabur Gold Pure Coconut Oil) on its bottle along with the aforementioned combination of colours, leaves no doubt that it has done so in order to grab some portion of the market of the plaintiffs (owners of the Parachute Coconut Oil and Parachute Advansed Hair Oil)."
The High Court bench of Justice Sheikh Hassan Arif and Justice Ahmed Sohel passed the findings in the verdict after hearing an appeal petition filed by the 'Asian Consumer Care (Pvt) Limited', represented by its Director Rakesh Kumar Agarwal, against an ad-interim order of status quo issued by a Dhaka court over using the same-designed bottle.
The court, however, dismissed the appeal filed by the authority of the Dabur Gold Pure Coconut Oil and affirmed the order passed by the District Judge Court in Dhaka in this regard.
The full text of the verdict has been released recently in the website of the Supreme Court, while the High Court bench delivered the short verdict on March 14 this year.
In the verdict the court said, "If we do such comparison through our normal eyes, it will be found clearly that the defendant has very smartly used not only the blue colour on the bottle of its product, it has also used almost similar sized bottle having confusingly similar shape. Not only that, it has smartly, if not deceptively, used the combination of blue, white and green colours in a very confusing way."
"Although, we do not have specific evidence for reaching such conclusion, we have prima facie found that this product of defendant, with those colour combination, design and layout, has every likelihood to cause confusion among the unwary people of Bangladesh to regard the same as having any connection with the product of the plaintiffs and/or with the plaintiffs."
"Therefore, we are of the view that the case for determining the infringement or passing-off has been prima-facie made out by the plaintiffs. Accordingly, the plaintiffs are entitled to get protection of law and Court at this stage."
According to the verdict, Marico Limited and Marico Bangladesh filed a suit with the District Judge Court in Dhaka seeking an injunction against the Asian Consumer Care (Pvt) Limited and its employees for restraining them form infringing the registered trademarks of 'Parachute' and 'Parachute Advansed' along with the bottle design, colour etc.
The trial court on September 27 in 2020 issued show-cause notices upon the defendants and, by the same order, passed an ad-interim order of status-quo restraining the defendants from infringing the trademarks of the plaintiffs.
Later the authority of Dabur Oil filed an application for setting aside the said ad-interim order of status-quo. Thereupon, the Court below, after hearing the parties, rejected the said application filed by the Dabur Oil authority on November 17 in 2020. Being aggrieved by such rejection, Dabur Oil authority preferred this appeal.

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