A five-judge Bench of the Delhi High Court comprising the Acting Chief Justice Manmohan, Justice Vibhu Bakhru, Justice Sanjeev Narula, Justice Tara Vitasta Ganju and Justice Manmeet Arora has appointed Gaurav Pachnanda SA, a Barrister at Fountain Court, as amicus curiae to the assist the Court with deciding a significant question of law regarding its jurisdiction to deal with rectification/cancellation petitions filed under the Trade Marks Act, 1999.
The question of law before the five-judge Bench in The Hershey Company v Dilip Kumar Bacha, Trading as Shree Ganesh Namkeen & another [CO (COMM.IPD-TM) 179/2023] is whether rectification petitions under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 can be filed only before a High Court within whose jurisdiction the offices of the Trade Mark Registry, which granted the registrations, are situated, or even before the High Court within whose jurisdiction the dynamic effect of the registration of the trademark is felt by the aggrieved party.
This question of law was referred to the five-judge Bench by Justice Pratibha M. Singh of the Delhi High Court, who disagreed with a previous judgment of a coordinate bench on this issue.
