Ever since I can remember, my name, Prince, has been a cause of great embarrassment to me. Tending to be polite, many people ask me if I really belong to a royal family. Others, very correctly, demand to know why I have been named such.
Over the years, I have gotten used to the ritual every time I meet someone for the first time (the only saving grace is in Kerala and Punjab, where the name is pretty common).
I have also gotten used to seeing my ‘brand’ on almost everything - from real estate companies, buckets and pens, to pipes, notebooks and even phenyl. I just hope that the name has brought them more luck than it has to me.
But if I had a high-stake business, and my brand or trademark was infringed upon, my reaction wouldn’t have been so generous.
Trademark woes
Just ask H&M, the Swedish fashion house that recently opened its second outlet in India. Earlier this week, a leading business daily reported that the multinational retailer served a legal notice on September 29, against HM Mega Brands, a Mumbai-based company. H&M has alleged that the Mumbai-company’s name and logo is ‘deceptively’ similar to its own.
On its part, HM Mega Brands contends that the company was registered in 2012 and is named after the initials of its founders – Hashim Merchant and Hamza Merchant. Both the sides seem to have some genuine points. It will be interesting how this case goes.
For H&M, the case will be important as it plans to expand to Mumbai, after opening the first two stores in Delhi.
Though India is just the 60th market globally for the company, the $17 billion Swedish giant has big plans.
This includes investing up to Rs 700 crore to open 50 stores over the next five years.
Mixed results
For the MNCs, legal battles over trademark have almost become a staple part of doing business in India. And often, the result has a telling effect. Timberland, the well-known American adventure sports brand, made a hasty exit from India earlier this year, hastened by a lost trademark battle with Woodland. The companies have similar logos and have product portfolios that almost mirror each other.
Similarly, Burger King, another American icon, has been in a soup ever since it opened its outlet in India in 2014. A desi, Gujarat-based Burger King serving vegetarian burgers filed a case against the American giant. The Indian ‘King’ contends that it has the right to the title as it opened the outlets first, in 1996. But the international chain claims that it had already registered in India in the 1970s. It is not the first of its kind experience for American fast food-company. In Australia, it is called Hungry Jack’s, as ‘Burger King’ already belonged to a local company.
There have been successes too. Last year, Pepsico won a case over the trademark Aquafina, its brand of packaged mineral water. A Delhi High Court bench restrained Aqua Mineral (India) from using a deceptively similar brand Aquafine. And this year in April, Kraft Foods won a case in Mumbai over its dessert brand Jell-O. A Mumbai firm was retailing an ice-cream named Mello Jelo.
Made in China
Compared to India, China is a bigger land mine when it comes to trademark tussles. Many companies, including Tesla, Hermès and Pfizer are in the middle of or have fought lengthy legal battles.
Did you know, a man in China’s Guangzhou now has the right to use the name of Justin Bieber.
The lesson from these cases is simple. Companies should register their trademarks at the earliest. These legal tussles will only further increase after India joines the international system with the Trade Marks (Amendment Act) 2010. Now, Indian companies need just a single application to register a trademark in 87 countries. But it is as simple for a company from any of these nations to do the same.