Respondent held, not guilty of disparagement.

V. RAMASUBRAMANIAN, J.

"Comparison lies at the root of modern advertising" says Cornish, W., in his "Intellectual Property"(4th Edn., Page 656). In McDonalds Vs Burgerking {(1986) FSR 45} Whitford J., warned that "advertisements are not to be read as if they are testamentary provision in a will or a clause in some agreement with every word being carefully considered and the words as a whole being compared". Yet, comparative advertisements have led to a lot of litigation and the case on hand is one.

2. C.S.No.451 of 2008 has been filed by Colgate Palmolive (India) Ltd., for a permanent injunction restraining the defendant from in any manner continuing the telecast of the impugned Television advertisements, filed as plaint document No.3 in a Compact Disk (CD) or telecasting any other advertisement which is disparaging or slandering the Colgate tooth pastes and for damages to the tune of Rs.10,01,000/-. Pending suit, the plaintiff has come up with -

.(i) O.A. No.493 of 2008 for an interim order of injunction restraining the respondent from making any false, misleading or disparaging representations or from making any slanderous statements/ representations in respect of the plaintiffs products and

.(ii) O.A. No.494 of 2008 for an interim order of injunction restraining the respondent from showing, screening, exhibiting or telecasting the offending TV Commercials/advertisements which seek to disparage/denigrate the applicants products.

.3. Simultaneously, M/S. Swabhanu Universal Agencies, the stockist of Colgate Palmolive (India) Ltd., has come up with a similar suit C.S.No.452 of 2008 for identical reliefs. Pending their suit, they have come up with -O.A. No.495 of 2008 for an interim order of injunction restraining the respondent from in any manner continuing with the telecast of the impugned Television advertisements, filed as plaint document No.3 and recorded in a CD.

4. On 24. 2008, the applications for ad interim ex parte injunction were moved and I directed the learned counsel for the applicant/ plaintiff to take private notice to the respondent. After service of notice, the applications for injunction were moved in the Vacation Court, on the ground that urgent interim orders were required. On 25. 2008, the respondent/defendant filed an affidavit of undertaking to the effect that the defendant would not use the words "only" and "first" in their offending advertisement, till the applications for injunction were heard and disposed of. This undertaking was given without prejudice to the rights of the respondent/defendant, only in view of the fact that there was no time in the Vacation Court to hear detailed arguments on the applications for injunction. Therefore, after the reopening of Court after Summer Vacation, all the applications were taken up for hearing and I heard Mr.Arvind P. Datar, learned Senior Counsel and Mr.P.S. Raman, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the plaintiffs in C.S.Nos.451 and 452 of 2008 respectively and Mr.C.Hari Krishnan, learned Senior Counsel and Mrs.Elizabeth Seshadri, learned counsel appearing for the respondent/defendant in both the suits.

5. While the plaintiff in C.S.No.451 of 2008 is the manufacturer of Dental Care products, including tooth pastes under the Trade Mark "Colgate", the plaintiff in C.S.No.452 of 2008 is their stockist. The defendant in both the suits manufactures and markets tooth pastes under the brand name "Anchor". Both of them have been indulging in an "advertisement war" against each other, for quite some time. Interestingly, the plaintiff and the defendant fight the war partly on the tarmac of satellite Television Channels and partly in Courts. The antecedents of the plaintiff and the defendant show that the moment a new advertisement is launched by one of them, it is challenged by the other in a Court of Law as amounting to disparagement. As Lord Diplock opined in Erven Warnink, B.V. Vs. Townend & Sons (Hull) Ltd, 1980 RPC 31, it would have been better if