An update via Mint, we hear that Bennett Coleman Co. Ltd. (BCCL) has appealed against the 15 December 2010 order of a Single Judge Bench of the Delhi High Court which refused to stay an infringement suit filed by the Financial Times Ltd. (London).
Readers will recall a post we’d run some days ago in the matter, which you can read here. The Mint story reports that the appeal has been admitted by a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, and the matter has been listed for final arguments on January 3, 2011.
By way of additional detail in the matter, Mint quotes a senior BCCL official:
The actual matter is before a court in Bangalore and “The Financial Times title is registered with the office of the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) and Times group still brings out the paper”.
Clearly, we haven’t heard the last of this yet!
Well…. taking cue from where u left, I think the last is about to come in this mother of all IP battles. IPAB recently decided (4th April 2012) on a bunch applications, so typical of a cross litigation matter. BCCL’s rectification application was allowed (Mark ‘Financial Times’/class 16); Financial Times Ltd’s rectification application was allowed (mark ‘Financial Times’ /class 16); TPHL’s rectification application was allowed (mark ‘Financial Times’ /class 9); TPHL’s rectification application was NOT allowed (mark FT /class 16)……WHO WON THE GAME?????
Well…. taking cue from where u left, I think the last is about to come in this mother of all IP battles. IPAB recently decided (4th April 2012) on a bunch applications, so typical of a cross litigation matter. BCCL’s rectification application was allowed (Mark ‘Financial Times’/class 16); Financial Times Ltd’s rectification application was allowed (mark ‘Financial Times’ /class 16); TPHL’s rectification application was allowed (mark ‘Financial Times’ /class 9); TPHL’s rectification application was NOT allowed (mark FT /class 16)……WHO WON THE GAME?????
Who won? The lawyers for both sides- definately!!
Times Publishing – definately – it anyways banked on the RNI titles to publish and cancelation of FTL’s TM registeration helps them more than cancelation of Times Publishing’s Trade Mark title – helps FT (UK) in short run (say next 5 years).
FT (UK) has seen declining subscription base of both online (internet) as well as newspaper business – they loose atleast the newspaper opportunity – but again it is debatable whether even if they had won the Trade Mark battle – whether
a) they could publish as the PRB Act cannot be overcome, till they file cancelation applications before the magistrate as per the PRB Act.
b) it would be economically viable to publish in India with a low subsciber base of less that 500 copies.
c) whether the social media sites have made newspaper brands such as FT – irrelevant and people prefer social media sites for news content rather than daily reading of a newspaper which is priced at 70 Rs. or more.
SO WHO HAS WON?? India?