JAGDISH PRASAD LADDA Vs. K. GANESH NADAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a petition filed under section 50 of the Copyright Act, 1957 for the expunction of artistic work bearing registration number A -65654/2003. According to the petitioner, both the petitioner and the respondent are in the same trade of detergents and the respondent has filed certain civil suits and criminal complaints against the petitioner alleging violation of his trade mark and copyright over the mark XTRA. He submits that the work in question was actually originated by a person, Mr. Akbar, employed by him for the purpose on 16.8.1985. Thus he is a person aggrieved in terms of section 50 of the Copyright Act, 1957. Petitioner claims contradiction in the statement of the respondent in the application for the impugned registration - in column 7, he claims himself to be the author of the work and in column 3, he claims himself to be the owner of the work. Petitioner has submitted that the year of the publication claimed in column 9 is 2000 whereas for the same work, the year of user claimed in the suits filed against him varies from petition to petition. Thus he has obtained registration by making false claims and suppressing the real facts. Petitioner submits that the respondent obtained the requisite certificate under section 45 of the Copyright Act, 1957 even though his application for registration of his artistic work as a trademark was pending before the Registrar of Trade Marks. His submission is that to maintain the purity of the register, the impugned entry may be expunged.

(2.) RESPONDENT in the written statement submitted that he had honestly conceived and adopted the artistic work XTRA in respect of detergent, washing cakes in the year 1998 and ever since the said date he is doing extensive and continuous business under the said artistic work. Accordingly, he filed the application for registration of the copyright under No. A -65654/2003 against which the petitioner has filed the rectification application. He has further submitted that he had filed application for registration of trade mark XTRA label on 28.8.2001 under No. 1039973 claiming user of one year. Accordingly, he had stated 2000 as the year of first publication in the copyright application. Later on, he found that the user claimed in the trade mark application was wrong and thus he applied for correction of the date of user and the same was ordered and corrected as 28.3.1998. Immediately on coming to know about the infringement and passing off committed by the petitioner herein, he filed a suit O.S. No. 103/2001 against the petitioner on the file of the 2nd Addl. District Court, Guntur and under the orders of the court, infringing goods were seized from the premises of the petitioner on 4th July, 2001. He has submitted that he had applied for registration of the copyright in question on 3.2.2003 which was received in the office of the copyright on 28.2.2003. Besides, respondent has made allegations that one Shri Govind Lal Bajaj related to Shri Jagdish Pershad Ladha had been forging the signatures of Shri Ladha for which he respondent had initiated appropriate criminal proceedings. Respondent has generally controverted the pleas of the petitioner.

(3.) PETITIONER in his rejoinder has generally denied or controverted the submissions of the respondent.