Mr Muscle creams CIF in Delhi HC

/ By / Comparative Advertising

The on-going dispute in the Tide/P&G vs Rin/HUL comparative advertising matter reminded me of a recent order of the Delhi High Court lying in my inbox for a few weeks, dealing with a comp ad dispute in the domain of kitchen cleaners – between Mr Muscle Kitchen Cleaner and CIF Cream. (You can download the case from the DHC website here: case title: SC Johnson & Son, Inc vs Buchanan Group Pty Ltd) This case does not entirely apply to […]

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Rin v. Tide: P&G Goes to Court

/ By / Comparative Advertising

According to latest news reports, P&G which owns “Tide” has knocked the doors of the Calcutta High Court in relation to HUL’s controversial Rin advertisement. According this news report, a few weeks back, Tide Natural’s advertisement which claimed a special fragrance was challenged by HUL before the Madras High Court on grounds that the claim was false. The Court too seemed to hold the same view since P&G couldn’t prove its claim. We’ll discuss this judgment in a later post.

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SpicyIP Tidbits:More on the Bayer Patent Linkage

/ By / Uncategorized

Updating our readers more on the Bayer Patent Linkage case, the Supreme Court today has admitted a special leave petition filed by Bayer. (For a more detailed report, see here ). We thank our reader Manish for bringing this to our notice. The case seems to be gaining more momentum owing to the apprehensions surrounding patent linkage as it potentially undermines the public health safeguards.The matter,as report earlier,has been listed in the third week of April for further hearing.Hopefully,the wait

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Rin v. Tide III: ASCI Steps into the Picture

/ By / Comparative Advertising

If news reports are to be believed, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has received complaints against HUL from two consumers against the controversial Rin advertisement. The general secretary of ASCI, Allan Collaco has said that a notice to HUL will be issued on Wednesday and HUL will be given a 15-day period to respond. Apparently, there are a few complaints pending against HUL in connection with other ads too. Last month, P&G reportedly lodged a complaint against HUL

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From Pranab, with love…are the budgetary sops going to bowl IP lovers over?

/ By / Uncategorized

The present financial budget has brought in a host of good news for the pharma industry with tax sops serving as the perfect holi gift from the Government. I am yet to go through the fine print of the budget,but on the face of it there seems to be a reason to rejoice for the pharma industry as the weighted deduction on in-house R&D expenditure has been hiked from 150% to 200%.The primary benefit to be accrued by means of

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SpicyIP Tidbits x 2: Of cow urine and Indian politicians!

/ By / Innovation, Patent

Be not fooled by the title of this post, dear readers. Merely combining two very interesting tidbits having caught the SpicyIP Team‘s eye this week, and not trying to draw any parallels here 🙂 Cow Urine brings possible relief to Diabetics Cow urine has long been advocated by some members of the Indian community for supposed medicinal properties. Indeed one of its most famous patrons was our former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who lived 100 years. However, reports indicate that

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Rin v. Tide II: Has Tide (P&G) Gone to Court?

/ By / Comparative Advertising

In the last two posts, I had discussed the facts of the Rin-Tide controversy and the position of the law on comparative advertising. It appears that mainstream media has finally woken up to the matter. A column in the Economic Times today reports on the controversy and adds that a source from HUL has said that Procter and Gamble, the owner of Tide has gone to Court on the advertisement. The source further informed ET that employees at HUL have

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Preventive Detention in ‘God’s own Country’ for ‘Copyright & Digital Pirates’

/ By / Copyright

Over the last several months we’ve blogged about several draconian preventive detention legislations aimed at combating video piracy and how these legislations may be unconstitutional. Photo: Munnar, Kerala – photo credit: Bimal KC. As of now we have confirmed news that the states of Tamil Nadu and Maharasthra have already amended their Goonda Acts to include copyright infringement of videos in the list of offences that could lead to preventive detention of the suspects (not convicts). An attempt to introduce

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Rin v. Tide I: What is the Law?

/ By / Comparative Advertising

SpicyIP Wishes all its Readers a Safe n Happy Holi! May Rin and Tide become friends this Holi! (Wouldn’t it be anti-competitive then?) (The conclusions originally arrived at in this post have been slightly altered after a bit of deliberation) In my last post, I had discussed in brief the recent advertisement for Hindustan Unilever’s detergent brand “Rin”, in which a rival brand “Tide” figures prominently. Quite a few comments to that post referred to the Horlicks v. Complan judgment

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