The main legal point established in the judgment is that a Plaintiff can file a suit in a court within the local jurisdiction of its registered office or principal office, regardless of the location of the defendants or the cause of action. However, if the Plaintiff chooses to file a suit at a location where it has a subsidiary or branch office, but there is no cause of action or defendants, it cannot invoke the special provisions of the intellectual property statutes to drag the Defendant to that distant location.

1. By this judgment, I propose to dispose of the preliminary issue of jurisdiction under Section 9A of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (“CPC”) raised by the Defendants in both suits.

2. In Suit No. 632 of 2014, the preliminary issue was framed on 31st March 2016. Shortly stated the Defendants’ case is that while the Plaintiffs have their registered office in Mumbai, they also have a branch office in Delhi, where the Defendants have their place of business and where, according to the Defendants, the cause of action has arisen. Therefore, according to Mr. Kirpekar for the Defendants in this Suit, this Court would not have jurisdiction. Only the courts in Delhi would.

3. The Defendants in Suit No. 516 of 2013 take a substantially similar plea. There, the Plaintiff has its registered office in Mumbai. The Defendants are based in Kolhapur and they allege that the Plaintiffs also have office in Kolhapur, and that the situs of the suit should, therefore, be Kolhapur.

4. I have heard Dr. Saraf for the Defendants in Suit No. 516 of 2013, Mr. Kirpekar for the Defendants in Suit No. 632 of 2014, Mr. Kadam for the Plaintiffs in Suit No. 516 of 2013 and Mr. Kane for the Plaintiffs in Suit No. 632 of 2014 at some length.

5. Dr. Saraf and Mr. Kirpekar base their submissions on a reading of the decision of the Supreme Court in Indian Performing Rights Society Limited v Sanjay Dalia & Another, (2015) 10 SCC 161: AIR 2015 SC 3479. To put it in a nutshell, the Defendants’ case before me is this: Neither Dr. Saraf nor Mr. Kirpekar dispute that the Plaintiffs can file a Suit under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 or under the Copyright Act, 1957 within the local limits of the jurisdiction of the District Court where the Plaintiff actually and voluntarily resides or carries on business or works for gain. What they suggest, however, is that this right is curtailed by the decision of the Supreme Court in Sanjay Dalia at least to this extent: that where such a Plaintiff also has a office at another location and the cause of action has arisen in that other location, then the Plaintiff cannot file the Suit at the place where it has its principal office or registered office, but must file it within the jurisdiction of the court where both the subsidiary or branch office and the cause of action are to be found.

6. Almost the entirety of the discussion before me has been on a reading of Sanjay Dalia’s case. Before proceeding to a consideration of the rival submissions on that decision, it is perhaps more appropriate to set out my understanding of the pre- and post-Sanjay Dalia jurisdictional regimes. Section 134(2) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (“TMA 1999”) parallels Section 62(2) of the Copyright Act, 1957 (“CA 1957”). Both depart from the usual jurisdictional provision we find in Section 20 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (“CPC”). Under the CPC, a suit must be brought (a) where all the defendants reside or work; or (b) where any of several defendants live or reside provided there is either prior leave or the others acquiesce in the jurisdiction; or (c) where the cause of action arises wholly or in part. Sections 134(2) and 62(2), on the other hand, do not have any such requirement. They simply say that a suit in infringement or passing off can be brought where the plaintiff resides or works. In the case of a corporate, this could be where it has its office or offices. In the pre-Sanjay Dalia era, this often resulted in much mischief: a corporate would have several satellite offices scattered around the country. Using these provisions, it would bring infringement and passing off suits in the courts in whose jurisdiction those satellite or field offices were located, even though the defendants were not there and no cause of action arose there. This was precisely the mischief the Sanjay Dalia court addressed. It did so not in the manner the Defendants suggest today, i.e., by a wholesale rewriting of Sections 134(2) and 62(2), for that could never have b