A civil court in Karnataka’s Bengaluru city ruled in favour of a small Bengaluru bakery chain in a battle for the Happy Belly trademark with Amazon Technologies Inc. and Cloudtail India Private Limited, ruling that a global market for products is not a consideration for rejecting locally registered trademarks.
The civil court ruled in favour of Shisham Hinduja, a 35-year-old local entrepreneur who filed the Happy Belly trademark in 2015 as Happy Belly Bakes, while Amazon Technologies and Cloudtail India sought the trademark in 2016 to offer gourmet delicacies online.
In its judgement, the civil court barred Amazon Technologies from “infringing or passing off” the entrepreneur’s trademark “Happy Belly Bakes” under the mark / name / label ‘Happy Belly’ or a similar one.” In addition, the court ordered Amazon Seller Services Private Limited to “delete items that are deceptively similar to the plaintiff’s trademark from its online marketplace in India.”
The 18th extra civil and sessions court in Bengaluru found on August 30 this year that “merely because the defendants have a worldwide market or global market for their products is not a justification to reject the registered trademark of plaintiff.”
“The legislators’ objective in creating the Trademarks Act was to preserve the preceding user’s or registered trademark holder’s trademark.” According to the Indian Constitution, everyone is equal before the law. When a registered trademark is in use, it cannot be utilised falsely by others,” the court held.
According to Hinduja’s case, she was questioned around the Christmas season in 2017 if her cakes and pastry items under the brand name “Happy Belly” were being offered online on the Amazon marketplace.
She discovered a website http://www.amazon.in/Happy-Belly offering groceries and gourmet cuisine under the name ‘Happy Belly,’ which was confusingly close to her registered Happy Belly Bakes trademark.
The entrepreneur claimed in the first civil court complaint that she is the registered owner of the brand Happy Belly Bakes since July 14, 2015, and that the trademark is valid until 2025.
The defendants just applied for registration of their trademark “Happy Belly” in India on May 17, 2016, according to the court.
“The plaintiff submitted an application for trademark registration on 14/07/2015, and the trademark registrar has also issued the registration certificate concerning the term or device ‘Happy Belly Bakes’ in favour of the plaintiff,” the civil court stated in its ruling.
“As a result, it is obvious that the plaintiff is the registered trademark owner of the trademark ‘Happy Belly Bakes,’ as well as the prior user of the trademark ‘Happy Belly Bakes,” the civil court noted.
During the trial, Amazon Technologies Inc. and Cloudtail India Private Limited claimed to be the owners of the “Happy Belly” trademark in five foreign countries: Australia, Mexico, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the European Union, and that registration of the trademark had been sought in several other jurisdictions.
“It is true that the defendant has registered its brand Happy Belly in a number of international countries.” “However, the defendant had no such registered trademark in India,” the civil court decided.
