CTR MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES LTD Vs. SERJI TRANSFORMER EXPLOSION PREVENTION TECHNOLOGIES PRIVATE LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are four Notices of Motion under Order 39 Rule 2A and 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 ("CPC"). All are filed by the Plaintiff ("CTR"), alleging that the Defendant ("Sergi") is in repeated and contumacious breach of restraint orders passed in CTR's patent infringement suit. This common judgment disposes of all four Notices of Motion.

(2.) I heard Mr. Seervai for CTR and Mr. Chagla for Sergi at some length. They took me through this record; no easy task, I might add, for not only do the Notices of Motion overlap, but they are also tied hand and foot to, and share a history with, CTR's principal Notice of Motion No. 497 of 2014 for injunctive relief. That Notice of Motion is now separated from this group, since I decided it by a judgment dated 23rd October 2015. There, I held for CTR and against Sergi on the issue of infringement of CTR's patent, one that relates to an explosion and fire detection technology for use in electrical transformers. Sergi is in appeal. It seems that on 1st December 2015, the Appeal Court stayed the order on the Notice of Motion; CTR moved the Supreme Court from that appellate stay order. On 16th December 2015, the Supreme Court set aside the appellate order and put in place its own earlier order of 25th May 2012, one to which I will presently return. That order now governs the parties. The appeal is pending hearing and final disposal before the Appellate Bench of this Court.

(3.) In this judgment, I refer to these applications as 'contempt Motions'; I do not propose to spend time on overly nice distinctions between applications such as these under the CPC and others under the Contempt of Courts Act. Apart from anything else, this is not a distinction that CTR itself has ever been careful to make, for it refers to its own applications as 'contempt applications' throughout.