The fight by two companies over trademarks for their cosmetic products has resulted in both losing their registered marks.
CavinKare Private Limited lost the trademark registration ‘Fairever’ for its line of cosmetic products after the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) directed the Registrar of Trademarks to remove the mark on the basis of an application filed by Wipro Chandrika Ltd. Simultaneously, IPAB also ordered the removal of the trademark ‘Chandrika Forever’ on its rival’s application.
Wipro Chandrika and CavinKare have been fighting over trademark for their cosmetic and soap products which were deceptively similar. Wipro Chandrika launched the product ‘Chandrika Forever’ in 2007 and obtained registrations of the trademark in respect of all kinds of soaps, and toiletry preparations, shampoos, handwash and sanitisers.
In 2010, CavinKare filed a civil suit seeking permanent injunction that restrained Wipro Chandrika from using the trademark ‘Chandrika Forever’. In retaliation, Wipro Chandrika filed applications before the IAPB seeking to cancel the registration of trademarks of CavinKare.
In its application, CavinKare contended that the rival’s trademarks were identical/deceptively similar. It also said there was a strong likelihood of the consumers getting confused and deceived by associating the Wipro Chandrika’s products under the ‘Chandrika Forever’ trademark with its well known trade mark ‘Fairever’. It also claimed that it had been continuously using the trademark ‘Fairever’ since 1998 for its cosmetics products.
The Board comprising vice chairman S.Usha and technical member V.Ravi said the contention of CavinKare in all the cases was that it had been using the trade mark “Fairever” since 1998. The IPAB deemed that their claim in the application for registration of trademark about the use of the marks since 1997 was unacceptable. It said: “Even assuming the word ‘Fairever’ was adopted in the year 1997, the use since 1997 has not been proved and therefore the trademark is wrongly remaining on the Register which deserves to be removed.”
