Trademark Law Declared by the Supreme Court of India in Twentieth-Century

Abstract

The Parliament of India makes, amends, and unmakes law. The Supreme Court of India (hereinafter, the Supreme Court), under Article 141 of the Constitution of India, declares the law and makes and unmakes the law while deciding cases through the process of judicial review and interpretation-construction. The constitutional powers of these two branches are related but separate. The law made by the Parliament stands constitutionally valid unless declared uconstitutional, eviscerated or read down by the Supreme Court. As the analyses reveals,1 theconstitutionality of none of the seven intellectual property (hereinafter, IP) enactments has been challenged before the Supreme Court in any of the cases brought before it. Had the constitutionality of these statutes been challenged even then the statutes are presumed to be constitutionally valid and the person who challenges the validity of the statute and any provision thereof has a heavy burden to discharge. The Supreme Court ordinarily interprets-constructs the provisions of the statute and applies the same to decide the question(s) of lawand/or question of facts in a lis between the parties before it. The answer of the Supreme Court becomes bindingnot only in personam but also in rem for the future cases. Among all the IP cases decided by the Supreme Court, trademark law may be called as the King of IP decisions with maximum number of reported decisions followed by copyright, patent and design laws. The first trademark case was decided by the Supreme Court in the year 1953, after 1196 days (3.27 years) of its establishment. In 20th century, the Supreme Court has decided a total of 19 cases on trademark law. On an average, the Supreme Court has decided.38 (point three eight) trademark case in a year; orone trademark case in 978.94 (point nine four) days or in 2.68 (point six eight) years. A review of reported decisions of 20th centuryreveals thatthe Court has: (i) declared Trademark Law in 15 decisions; (ii) not only interpreted the provisions of the statutes but has also constructed them; (iii) not declared anything on the constitutionality of the trademark statutes as no such question of constitutionality was involved; (iv) delivered all the decisions unanimously as no dissenting or concurring judgment is reported; (v) decided maximum number of cases by Full Bench (11) and remaining 8 decisions by Division Bench. It is also observed that two Chief Justices of India and one Acting Chief Justice were on the Bench in three decisions, but the judgment was authored only by the Acting Chief Justice. Paper proceeds with the same argument and method as developed and adopted in the first three papers covering patent law, copyright law and design law published under the theme „IP Laws Declared by the Supreme Court‟. This Paper seeks to cull out the principles of trademark law as declared by the Supreme Court in 20th century decisions.