TN: HC Bench Upholds 'No Sale' Order On Sunfeast Mom's Magic Biscuit, But ITC Can Exhaust Stocks

Chennai: Nearly a month after a single judge of the Madras High Court restrained ITC Limited from selling Sunfeast Mom’s Magic butter biscuits, a Division Bench on Wednesday confirmed the order. The restraining order was passed on the grounds that the brand packaging in a blue wrapper was deceptively similar to the one used for many years for the product Good Day Butter Cookies by Britannia Industries Industries Limited.

The Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, however, allowed ITC Limited to sell its butter biscuits in blue wrappers until the existing stock was exhausted. Thereafter, the manufacturer cannot sell the biscuits in the same blue wrapper and must change the colour of the wrapper.

Row over identical packaging

Last month Justice PT Asha had by an interim order restrained ITC Limited from selling the biscuit by pointing out that consumers generally do not “spot six differences between two identical biscuit packets” that are kept on the shelves of a retail shop next to each other. She disapproved of identical packaging of biscuits by different manufacturers.

The court had held that this would fall within the ambit of the Trade Marks Act of 1999. Britannia’s blue packaging of the Good Day Butter Cookies was as old as 1997, while ITC Limited had introduced Sunfeast Mom’s Magic butter biscuits in similar packaging much later.