Here's a Guest Post on the application Gillette Defence in India by Avinash Kumar Sharma, a litigator from the High Court of Delhi: The concept of a Gillette Defence was put forth by Lord Moulton in the case of Gillette safety razor company v. Anglo American Trading Company Limited in the year 1913. The concept kicks in whenever a defendant in a suit for patent infringement takes the plea that the product or process implemented by it is covered by prior art. It is based on the premise that there can be no infringement of a patent whose invention is covered by a lapsed patent or an ..read more

I have writtenbeforeon the essential requirements of institution of a representative suit under Order 1, Rule 8. I recently came across two more judgements of the Supreme Court which shed more light on its nuances and scope. The first one was delivered in 1963 and the second in 1990. In the first judgement, the issue before the Court involved a combined interpretation of Section 80 of the CPC (suits against Government) and Order 1, Rule 8. In this case, two individuals issued a notice under Section 80 to the then State Government of Madras notifying the Government of their intention to the ..read more

In the last post, I had discussed the judgement of a Full Bench of the Calcutta High Court delivered in 1880 on Section 13 of the Evidence Act. In stark contrast to the ratio of the majority of the said judgement, in The Collector Of Gorakhpur vs Ram Sundar Mal (1934) and in judgements before that, the Privy Council and the Calcutta High Court took the view that a judgement which is not inter partes is still admissible as a transaction within the meaning of Section 13 in a subsequent proceeding. Extracted below is the relevant portion of The Collector judgement: “The question whether statement ..read more

How does one prove the existence of a right or a custom in any proceeding before the Court? Is there a specific provision which applies to such a circumstance? In what context does the exercise become relevant? To address these and such questions, one must look to Section 13 of the Evidence Act, 1872, which is reproduced below: 13. Facts relevant when right or custom is in questionWhere the question is as to the existence of any right or custom, the following facts are relevant. (a) Any transaction by which the right or custom in question was created, claimed, modified, recognized, asserted, o ..read more

On December 12, 2017, the Delhi High Court delivered a crisp 21-paragraph ex parte decree against the defendants in a suit for infringement of the “Red Sole” trademark instituted by the global luxury retail brand Christian Louboutin. Apart from granting injunctive reliefs to the brand owner/plaintiff against the defendants and declaring the Red Sole trademark well-known, the Court also awarded damages to the plaintiff to the tune of INR 1,63,000, and INR 8,63,790 as costs. While the judgement warrants analysis with respect to the Court’s reasons for declaring the Red Sole mark well-known, my p ..read more