HALDIRAM INDIA PVT LTD Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Is it possible that the Trade Marks Registry (TMR?) in this country can lose over 44,000 of its files and not realise that it has for over five years? Unfortunately, it appears it is. Pursuant to stringent orders by this Court in the present petition, the TMR discovered in February this year that 44,404 files of trademark registrations have gone missing from its five branches in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Chennai. What is disconcerting is that even the TMR has no real answer yet to the many questions that arise: who caused these many files to go missing, when exactly they went missing, whether these missing files can be recovered and if not, whether they can be reconstructed. The consolation, if any, is that the TMR has placed before the Court a plan of corrective and preventive action which it has promised to sincerely implement. Whether in fact that happens remains to be seen.

(2.) A brief recounting of the background events is necessary to begin with. The Petitioner, a company having its registered office in New Delhi, stated that the its predecessor-in-interest adopted the trademark HALDIRAM BHUJIAWALA somewhere in 1941-42 in respect of sweets and namkeens and used the mark in the course of trade under the name and style of M/s Chandmal Ganga Bishan. The present proceedings are an off-shoot of the disputes arising from the application No. 285062 made with the Registrar of Trade Marks, New Delhi for grant of registration of the trademark HALDIRAM BHUJIAWALA as represented in a V-shaped logo device in Class 30 on 29th December 1972. On the said application being published in the Trade Marks Journal in accordance with the provisions of the Trade and Merchandise Marks Act 1958, an opposition, numbered as DEL 2106 was filed by a firm M/s. Haldiram Madanlal. On 31st July 1980 the Registrar of Trade Marks ("Registrar?) dismissed the opposition DEL 2106 and directed the application No. 285062 to proceed to registration for the entire territory of India except West Bengal. Later the firm M/s. Chandmal Ganga Bishan was dissolved. In 1987 orders were passed by the Registrar for recordal of the names of the sons of late Mr. Moolchand Aggarwal as proprietors of the aforementioned registered mark. The sons later formed the Petitioner company which was recorded as the proprietor of the mark. The Petitioner states that litigation commenced in December 1991 between the Petitioner's predecessor-in-interest and the family of Mr. Kamla Devi Aggarwal, an ex-partner of M/s. Chandmal Ganga Bishan. In the said proceedings Mr. Kamla Devi Aggarwal claimed to be the registered proprietor of an identical trademark registered under No. 330375 in Class 30. It appears that an opposition CAL 1048 was filed to application No. 284166B filed by M/s. Haldiram Bhujiawal to grant of registration of the trademark HALDIRAM MADANLAL BHUJIAWALA. The Petitioner filed another application for registration of the trademark HALDIRAM (logo) under No. 559875 in Class 30 which was also opposed by the family members of Rameshwar Lal Aggarwal/Mrs. Kamla Devi Aggarwal and the opposition proceedings were designated as DEL-T-2488, DEL-T-2489, DEL-T-2490 and DEL-T-2515. The Petitioner in 1999 filed CAL 629 for rectification of trade mark No. 330375.

(3.) It is stated that in the course of the ongoing litigation between the parties, the Petitioner filed the following six requests with the TMR for issuance of certified copies of several documents: