(1.) 1.1 An action for passing off and other allied reliefs, a suit was instituted by the appellant in C.S.405 of 2014. The appellant is an Italian company, which is involved in the manufacture and sale of brass ball valves and other kinds of valves and fittings. It was marketing its products under the trademark 'Rubeinetterie Bresciane" with a design mark enclosing within it the letters 'R' and 'B'. Since 2005, the respondent has been a major associate of the appellant and has been marketing its products in India. Alleging that the respondent began selling spurious and counterfeit goods, and passing them off as appellant's product, the latter terminated the distributorship of the respondent with it, and brought an action for passing off.
(2.) 2.1 The respondent primarily resisted them on grounds of maintainability. It now requires to be introduced that the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, (would be referred to as CCA) was enacted by the Parliament as per Central Act 4/2016, and was notified on 23-10-2015, and consequently a Commercial Division came to be constituted Vide notification dated 04-12-2017. On 03-01-2018, the learned Single Judge before whom the suits are pending, has passed an order transferring the suits to the Commercial Division of this Court.
(3.) It may be stated here that since this issue on maintainability is on the point of jurisdiction of this Bench to probe on the right of appeal, even the appeal in OSA.SR.No.33496 of 2018, which is yet to be taken on file by the Registry, faced identical resistance as in OSA 252 of 2018. Therefore, instead of deciding on the validity of the cause for delay in filing the appeal against the order in A.No:2556 of 2017, OSA SR.No.33496 of 2018 is also taken up for testing its maintainability. After all, if this Court has no jurisdiction to entertain the appeal, then it goes as a corollary that it does not have the jurisdiction to decide CMP.No.12023 of 2018 filed for condoning the delay. Hence, for narrative convenience both the cases would be referred to only as appeals.