‘Consuming inferior quality packaged drinking water could be fatal’: Delhi High Court restrains man from selling water under ‘Taza’ brand

“Defendant’s infringing activities also hold grave potential for public harm as the product in question is packaged drinking water which directly ties into public health. Consumption of packaged drinking water which may be of inferior quality could lead to fatalities. Given that packaged drinking water of both parties is sold in the same trade channel, consumers may associate the defendant’s product as emanating from the plaintiff’s, leading to confusion whereas plaintiffs have no control over the quality of defendant’s product,” the high court held, adding that Khan had clearly infringed and passed off Tata’s drinking water product.

The high court had on November 2, 2020 passed an interim ex parte order restraining Khan from using the mark ‘Taza Water Plus’ or any other mark or device which may be deceptively similar to ‘Tata Water Plus’ product/packaging. It noted that Khan did not appear before the court thereafter.

While proceeding ex parte against Khan, the high court also said he had chosen to deliberately stay away from the proceedings and thus Tata Sons Private Limited and its group companies will be entitled to nominal damages.

The court observed that Khan had used an “identical trade dress” (visual appearance) as that of ‘Tata Water Plus’ which included brown and blue strips and the words mentioned therein and their font size and style.

“The only visible change is that the third-letter ‘T’ in ‘TATA’ has been replaced by ‘Z’ in ‘TAZA’. Further, the plaintiffs’ product label, which features a splash of water as a device next to the word ‘Plus’, has been slavishly copied in the form of a heart-shaped splash of water which is also placed identically as plaintiff’s device,” the court observed.

Justice Narula further said that evaluation of the comparison between the two products has to be made while considering an average and uninformed consumer’s perspective rather than that of an experienced and astute buyer and found that all the essential features of the plaintiff’s mark and packaging had been copied, wherein the likelihood of confusion was evident.

It further said that Khan’s use of Tata’s mark and trade dress had been done “solely with the ulterior motive of freeriding upon the immense goodwill and reputation associated with the well-known mark Tata and the mark Tata Water Plus”.

“The defendant’s actions manifest bad faith and there is no plausible explanation for defendant’s use of the name/ mark ‘Taza Water Plus’ and a trade dress identical to plaintiff’s trade dress for the product in question. Defendant, if not permanently restrained, is likely to cause injury to plaintiffs, on account of severe harm to reputation and dilution of goodwill of plaintiffs’ marks,” it added.

The court further directed damages of Rs 3 lakh to be paid to Tata Sons by Khan and directed him to hand over all tangible or intangible infringing material to Tata Son’s authorized representative(s) for the purpose of destruction, in compliance with rules/regulations.