Iskcon sue Iscon over trademark infringement
In an unusual development of suing over trademark infringement in India, a temple has sued a land developer for using its name as well as logo in order to gain benefit from the reputation of the religious organization.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness ( Iskcon) has slammed a lawsuit against its near neighbour Iscon Mega Mall, which is a sister concern of J P Infrastructure Pvt Ltd for making use of a similar looking logo and name. The temple authorities are accusing that the real estate firm Iscon Mega mall is taking undue advantage of the goodwill of the temple among the people and want the court to discourage the mall from doing the same.
The trust had issued a notice to the firm earlier in 2013 when it setup a mall near to the temple and had also approached a civil court regarding this matter.
The petition filed by the temple stated, “The reputation of the trademark has been misappropriated by the realty firm in such a way that it misrepresents itself as being the owner of the trademark or having some nexus/affiliation with the temple trust.”
The realty firm filed an application demanding dismissal of the suit. The firm argued in its reply that, “Since the organization has its own temple near our various schemes i.e. Iscon Park, Iscon Plaza, Iscon Mega Mall, it could not have been unaware of the use of trademark Iscon, particularly when it also has various other residential, commercial and retail projects just near the temple since the year 2000.”
Iscon Mega Mall also claim that its logo has ‘JP’ printed in it and therefore not similar to the logo of the temple.
The court has, however, rejected the arguments of the real estate firm’s arguments and the main petition is still pending in that matter.
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