Breaking News: Toyota Loses Trademark Battle over Prius at Indian Supreme Court

Dec 2022

The plaintiff, in this case, is Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha and they seek to prevent the defendant, a spare parts supplier by the name M/S Prius Auto Industries Limited, from the usage of the trademarks- “Toyota”, “Innova”, and “Prius”.

According to the finding of the court, two of the three trademarks mentioned, namely Toyota and Innova were registered trademarks of the plaintiff and the lower court hearing the case had no issue in finding the favor of Toyota in this count. Interestingly, the defendants did not contest these findings in the Supreme Court.

The contest was over the trademark, “Prius” in which the plaintiff claimed that it belonged exclusively to them. According to the finding, the plaintiff had no trademark registration for “Prius” in India and on the other side, the defendant had their registration with the same name dating back to 2002 in India. The plaintiff Toyota challenged that they had been using the trademark as early as 1997 and that the defendants had wrongly and dishonestly registered the same name in India.

The Supreme Court has to decide upon if the plaintiff could still claim the trademark of being a prior user of the name despite the defendants’ registration of Prius as their trademark.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the defendant with the view that the Plaintiff had not supplied enough evidence of the reputation of the mark “Prius” in the Indian market. The court held that merely because Prius is a well-known name outside India, it does not necessarily mean that it enjoys a reputation in India as well. Its reputation in the local milieu needs to be proved as well.

The court’s ruling took the trademark law to its foundational roots by blunting the pervasive overreach of the trans-border reputation doctrine. Besides, there are other two things worth noting from the above ruling of the court.

  • The court sticks strongly to the view that mere reputation alone does not suffice for a passing off action and one needs to demonstrate local goodwill, which at the least means that there must be some customers within the local jurisdiction.
  • The apex court ruled that proof of actual confusion is often difficult to adduce and therefore the likelihood of confusion was the appropriate test, even at the interim stage.

This particular case on the context of legal legibility, the decision is supposedly quietly high,however, on certain legal aspects, the decision could have done far better.

Trending Blogs
An Overview of Copyright
WIPO defines copyright as the right of creators to ownership of their creations and to make use for commercial or other purposes. Copyright today covers literary creations, printed material, computer programs, data, audiovisual media, dance, paintings and drawings, photographs, sculpture, architecture, ad material, technical drawings and others that are the outcome of intellectual effort. From […]
Read More
Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Law
What is Artificial Intelligence? The division of Science which deals with making machines equipped with human-like intelligence to act in human-like fashion and the exhibit human capabilities is known as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Multiple disciplines like Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, Mathematics, Biology and Neuron Science contribute to the development of AI. Benefits Of AI […]
Read More
Lack of Music Publishing Knowledge Robbing Indian Artists of their Rights
In India there has been a lack of knowledge regarding publishing music. It can be said that a large part of publishing an art for is still unexplored. It is not about the common people but the artists and the music companies are oblivious towards it. At the initial stage due to lack of knowledge […]
Read More
Can Religious Symbols Be Registered As Trademarks?
Are you planning to register religious symbols as trademarks? Well, you should research thoroughly to understand the use of religious symbols as trademarks. You have to consider the sentiments of people before you plan to use regions symbol for your business. India being a secular country encourages different citizen follows different religions, practicing it and […]
Read More
Breaking News: Toyota Loses Trademark Battle over Prius at Indian Supreme Court
The plaintiff, in this case, is Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha and they seek to prevent the defendant, a spare parts supplier by the name M/S Prius Auto Industries Limited, from the usage of the trademarks- “Toyota”, “Innova”, and “Prius”. According to the finding of the court, two of the three trademarks mentioned, namely Toyota and […]
Read More
The Clash Of Jurisdiction Of CCI And TRAI
Overlapping Jurisdiction The Competition Act, 2002 read with section 18 of the legislation delegates to the Competition Commission of India (the “CCI”) the duty of “promoting and sustaining competition” in the Indian economy. This implies that the CCI will have principal jurisdiction to regulate conditions of competition in the relevant market of India. Whereas, Section […]
Read More
Trademarking surnames
Having difficult surnames may be challenging to explain others and also when you want to register the name as trademark. As per the trademark and merchandise act of 1958, it is stated that a mark can be refused if one choose a personal name or surname. Though, there is no such clear specification in the […]
Read More
Intellectual Property Glance
The discussion on intellectual property starts with distributing it into three categories for the same of convenience and clarity. The product of intellectual efforts: The product of intellectual effort could be tangible or intangible encompassing such outcomes as literary creations, artistic creations, books, music, song, dance, drama, sculpture, paintings and even computer programs. It must […]
Read More
Protection Folklores India Intellectual Property Rights
India is a land of diversity when it comes to folk and ethnic culture with hundreds of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups with diverse origins and lifestyles that, over time, intermingled in part and remained untouched in parts over centuries. Perception about folklore differs in India, mainly associated with tribals and simple rural people, rather […]
Read More
Intellectual Property and its Role in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Intellectual property rights are considered to be an important asset of any corporate unit. It is an indication of the creation of mind and the work that makes one entity different from the other. With better IP or intellectual rights, it would be easy to promote the possible innovations and this would be useful in […]
Read More
X
Download Firm Profile