The Bombay High Court on Monday upheld an order restraining The New Indian Express from using its brand outside the territories permitted under contractual arrangements, affirming an earlier ruling passed in favour of The Indian Express in a trademark dispute between the two entities.
The Division Bench of Justice Bharati Dangre and Justice Manjusha Deshpande dismissed an appeal filed by Express Publications Madurai (EPM) and upheld the decision of the single-judge bench, which had granted interim injunctive relief to The Indian Express.
The dispute traces its origins to a family settlement within the Indian Express Group, following the death of group founder Ramnath Goenka in 1991. Pursuant to a Memorandum of Settlement executed in 1995 and a supplementary agreement entered into in 2005, ownership of the “Indian Express” trademark remained exclusively with The Indian Express, controlled by Vivek Goenka.
Under the same arrangement, EPM, controlled by Manoj Kumar Sonthalia, was granted restricted rights to use the title “The New Indian Express” solely for newspaper publication in certain southern States and Union Territories.
The controversy arose after EPM organised an event titled “The New Indian Express – Mumbai Dialogues” in September 2024 in Mumbai, a territory outside the scope of the agreed arrangement.
In the earlier order, the single judge held that such use breached the binding consent decree governing the parties. The Court observed that The New Indian Express was only a derivative of the Indian Express trademark and could not be used beyond the territorially restricted licence granted under the settlement.
The single judge had also rejected EPM’s contention that it possessed independent proprietary rights over the mark, holding that the settlement created only a limited and conditional licence.
Concurring with these findings, the Division Bench refused to interfere with the injunction, continuing the restraint on EPM from using the brand outside the permitted southern territories for events, programmes or related activities.
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