Cadbury is set to lose its trademark of'eclairs' following a case initiated by ITC. This is the third instance of such a case after Kellog's and Bata. Experts are still confused on why the chocolate maker couldn't come up with enough evidence in the court.
The case is a decade old which started when ITC started marketing eclairs along with it trademark candyman against which cadbury had got an injunction.
ITC had to eventually move to the IPAB stating that the trademark hadn't been in use since 1994. Cadbury in its defence stated that eclairs was their trademark since 1974.
"Just the registration alone will not help the respondents to prove their use, " said the IPAB judgement after Cadbury failed to produce a single evidence. The judgement also stated that the board in various matters on the issue of non-user has held that if the respondent does not appear to rebut the ground of non-user, it goes without saying that they have not used the mark even after several years of registration and the mark shall be cancelled for non-user.
T Prashant Reddy, an intellectual property lawyer, said, "It is not clear as to why Cadbury failed to file such evidence, especially since it had been maintaining some of these trademarks for more than 40 years."
A spokesperson for Cadbury downplayed the development. She said, "The label mark for Cadbury Eclairs, which formed the subject matter of the litigation, has not been used by Cadbury for many years and hence we do not plan to take this matter further. We continue to retain other trademark rights in the Cadbury Dairy Milk Eclairs brand, and the IPAB's decision, if any, has no bearing on those trademark rights."
Non-use of late has become a major reason for brands losing trademarks, as seen earlier in the case of Kellogs getting it trademark Pops removed after a Chennai-based Pops Food products filed a case against it. Earlier this year Bata also lost its trademark Sparx in a case against Relaxo footwear.
