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Informist, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026

 

--HC bars Kwick Living from airing advt disparaging HUL's products 

--CONTEXT: HC order on HUL's interim injunction plea against Kwick Living 

 

NEW DELHI – In an interim injunction order passed on Thursday, the Delhi High Court restrained Kwick Living (I) Pvt. Ltd. from airing advertisements disparaging Hindustan Unilever Ltd.'s products such as Surf Excel and Vim. Hindustan Unilever had alleged that the advertisements of Kwick Living, which runs the cleaning products brand Beco, had disparaged the petitioner's brands Surf Excel and Vim by claiming they contain chemicals that cause skin irritation and allergies. Kwick Living has to remove its advertisements within one week and file an affidavit of compliance within one week thereafter, said the court.

 

To be sure, it may well be true that, taken on a standalone and isolated basis, Benzisothiazolinone and Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate can cause skin irritation and allergic reaction in a particular user, and that HUL's products contain some proportion of these chemicals, said the court. However, the position is that the various formats of advertisements put out by Kwick Living do not use the aforesaid statements on a standalone or isolated basis, said the court. Kwick Living in its advertisement campaign juxtaposes the foregoing statements, and when read together and coupled with the visual and pictorial depiction of HUL's products, the unmistakable overall message for an average consumer is that since the plaintiff's products contain Benzisothiazolinone and Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate, using them would cause skin irritation, including redness, itching, or even eczema, said the court. 

 

Clearly, an average consumer or any non-expert, would neither bother nor have the expertise to analyse or deconstruct the narrative contained in Kwick Living's campaign, said the court. Nor would the consumer reason with themselves or undertake a critical, scientific analysis of whether the statements contained in the campaign are true when HUL's products are used in the usual and ordinary way in daily life, said the court. When viewed from this perspective, the added narrative in Kwick Living's campaign, namely that the years of trust built in HUL's products may be based on what the consumer never knew until now, would most likely shake the consumer's confidence in those products, it said.

 

What is more, in some of the advertisements, the adjoining panel which places HUL's products alongside Kwick Living's products, exhorts the viewer to "Switch to Beco", and says in emphatic terms, that Beco does not contain Benzisothiazolinone and Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate and elsewhere also suggests that the defendant's products are "hypoallergenic", "baby safe" and "pet safe" which betrays the commercial motive of the defendant, said the court. The overall result of these representations contained in Kwick Living's campaign, when perceived together and holistically, is not mere comparative advertising which eulogises the defendant's products as being superior to those of HUL, but denigrates the plaintiff's products purportedly couched in verified scientific basis, it said.

 

The advertising campaign further cites complex chemical names, proportions, and percentages of the harmful ingredients to give the viewer a sense of certitude that HUL's products are risky to use, said the court. In the opinion of the court, in doing so, Kwick Living prima facie crosses the permissible contours of comparative advertising, said Justice A.J. Bhambhani. Comparative advertising, which portrays that a party's product is superior to that of a competitor and thereby shows the competitor's product in a poor light, in an effort to dissuade a consumer from buying the competitor's product, is not itself offensive to the law, said the court. However, permissible comparative advertising is subject to the caveat and qualification that it must not be based on statements that are not truthful or that misrepresent a state of affairs and that are deceptive or misleading in their overall effect and impact, it said.

 

The high court was hearing HUL's interim injunction plea to restrain Kwick Living from continuing its advertising campaign under the name and style of "War on What's Hidden" in relation to the plaintiff's products Vim and Surf Excel. HUL alleged that Kwick Living's advertisements falsely portrays the plaintiff's products as unsafe and capable of causing skin irritation or allergic reaction to users. The advertising campaign amounts to targeted commercial disparagement, infringement of the plaintiff's trademarks and trade dress, copyright infringement, passing off, and unfair competition, said HUL.

 

For the June quarter, HUL had reported net profit of INR 26.31 billion on revenues of INR 166.57 billion. At 1412 IST, the shares of HUL were down 0.2% at INR 1,941.60 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

 

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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