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Informist, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – A delay in filing a plea does not mean a suit for injunction is not urgent when an infringement against the party's intellectual property rights continues, the Supreme Court said Monday. The court said that in actions alleging continued infringement of intellectual property rights, urgency must be assessed by the courts in the context of the continuing injury and the public interest in preventing deception.

 

The court was deciding on the expression "contemplates any urgent interim relief" in Section 12A of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, for infringement of intellectual property rights. Section 12A of the Act mandates that before a commercial suit can be filed, the plaintiff must first attempt to resolve the dispute through pre-institution mediation, unless the suit seeks urgent interim relief.

 

In the current case, the petitioner, Novenco Building and Industry, had pleaded that Xero Energy Engineering Solutions Pvt. Ltd., its former distributor, had dishonestly appropriated its proprietary designs and patents to manufacture and market identical fans under deceptively similar names. The court noted that such infringing activity was continuing and causing immediate and irreparable harm to the appellant's business reputation, goodwill, and proprietary rights. 

 

The Himachal Pradesh High Court had rejected Novenco Building's plea in 2024 as there was a delay of six months in filing the petition after the company had inspected the fans installed by the respondent. The high court had said there was no "genuine urgency" in Novenco Building's plea to seek interim relief of injunction and the party could go for pre-institution mediation instead.

 

Setting aside the high court's order, the Supreme Court said courts must look beyond the time lag and evaluate the substance of the plea for interim protection. The insistence on pre-institution mediation in a situation of continuing infringement would leave the plaintiff without any remedy, allowing the infringer to continue to profit under the protection of procedural formality, it said.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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