The court held that the concealment of material facts by the respondents did not warrant the dismissal of the suit or the vacation of the interim injunction, as the equities lay in favor of the respondents.

JUDGMENT :

(V. Kameswar Rao, J.) :—

CM APPL. 9509/2023

1. This is an application filed by the appellants under Order XLI Rule 27 of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908 (‘CPC’, for short) seeking to bring on record the examination report of the Trade Marks Registry dated April 28, 2010 and reply dated June 23, 2011. The reasons given in the application are that it has now come to the knowledge of the appellants through the website of the Trade Marks Registry that the registrant itself has disclaimed any exclusive rights of the impugned Trade Mark through its reply dated June 23, 2011, in response to the examination report dated April 28, 2010. It is stated in the application that the proceedings and the materials before the Trade Marks Registry for registration of the impugned mark would be material and relevant for the adjudication of the present appeal. That apart, it is stated that the documents being part of public record are undisputable and unimpeachable and it was incumbent upon the respondents to bring on record the same, which they have failed to do.

2. The respondents would contest the application by stating that the application is not maintainable under the parameters of Order XLI Rule 27 of CPC inasmuch as the said documents were publicly available on the website of the Trade Marks Registry. The appellants cannot contend that they were unaware of the said documents, more so, when certain other communications with the Trade Marks Registry were placed on record in the suit.

3. Noting the above stand of the parties, in the interest of justice, this application is allowed and the documents are taken on record.

4. Application is disposed of.

FAO(OS) (COMM) 40/2023

5. The present appeal has been filed by the defendants in the suit (hereinafter referred to as ‘appellants’, for convenience) impugning the judgment of the learned Single Judge dated February 22, 2023, whereby the application filed by the plaintiffs in the suit (hereinafter referred to as ‘respondents', for convenience) under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of CPC bearing IA No. 6131/2020 in CS (COMM) 277/2020 seeking ad-interim injunction was allowed. The learned Single Judge while declaring that the respondent Nos. 1 and 2 were guilty of suppression of material facts, had imposed a cost of Rs. 10 lakh on the respondents, and restrained the appellants from using the word ‘SONA’ in its corporate name/Trade Mark/trade name/logo/domain name in relation to any goods or services during the pendency of the suit.

FACTS

6. At the outset, we may provide a brief factual matrix of the facts leading to the present appeal.

(i) On July 08, 2008, the respondent No. 2 i.e. Sona Management Services Limited applied for registration of the device mark ‘SONA Driving Tomorrow’ with an ‘S’ symbol (a curved road), which was granted, with the following disclaimer:

“The applicant has no exclusive right for the word SONA, separately.”

(ii) On September 10, 2008, SONA BLW Präzisionsschmiede GmbH, a German company applied for the word mark registration of ‘SONA BLW’, which was granted by the Trade Marks Registry on July 18, 2014.

(iii) On March 28, 2019, by way of an assignment deed, SONA BLW Präzisionsschmiede GmbH, transferred the mark ‘SONA BLW’ to the respondent No. 1.

(iv) On June 06, 2020, an Extraordinary General Meeting of the appellant No. 1was held wherein it was resolved to change of name of appellant No. 1 from Mandira Marketing Private Limited to Sona Mandhira Private Limited. According to the appellants, Ms. Rani Kapur, Managing Director of the respondent No. 2 company was present in the aforesaid meeting and seconded the resolution to change the name of the appellant No. 1.

(v) As per the appellants, on July 24, 2020, the respondents filed the suit, by alleging that the respondent No. 2 came to know about the change of name of the appellant No. 1 on June 22, 2020. Along with the suit, the respondents also filed an application under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of CPC, being I.A. No. 6131 of 2020 seeki