Court restrains Parle from using ‘FABIO’ or ‘FAB!O’ mark to sell biscuit after OREO alleges trademark infringement: Delhi High Court
The Delhi High court passed a judgement on 10th February, 2023. This was seen in the case of Intercontinental Great Brands v Parle Product Private Limited 2023/DHC/000953 and he case was presided over by Hon’ble Justice C Hari Shankar
FACTS OF THE CASE:
The plaintiff alleges that the defendant Parle Products Pvt. Ltd., has, in or after January 2020, introduced its own range of vanilla cream filled chocolate biscuits under the brand ―FAB!O‖. The plaintiff alleges that, prior to 2020, the defendant was using the brands FAB and FAB! for its biscuits. After 2020, the defendant introduced cream filled chocolate sandwich biscuits under the mark ―FAB!O‖. The plaintiff points out that the FAB!O mark is being used only for cream filled chocolate sandwich biscuits which were identical to the biscuits manufactured and sold by the plaintiff under the OREO trademark. For all other biscuits, the defendant continues to use the FAB! mark. The allegation of the plaintiff is that the mark on the defendant‘s biscuit, though written FAB!O is bound to be pronounced FABIO. The mark is, therefore, according to the plaintiff, deceptively similar to the plaintiff‘s OREO mark.
JUDGEMENT :
The Court said that there is no other biscuit with the similar name and, therefore, a customer is likely to confuse the two products . Justice C Hari Shankar said that Parle cannot use the marks ‘FABIO’ or ‘FAB!O’ for any purpose whatsoever.
“This injunction shall also apply to stocks presently in the defendant‘s possession and as yet uncleared, though it would not apply to stocks which have already been released in the market,” the Court ordered. .
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Judgement reviewed by Drishti verma