Bombay HC grants temporary relief to CEAT in case against Apollo Tyres’ ads

In a recent order, the court said that CEAT has made out a strong prima facie case for the grant of ad-interim relief in its petition, alleging that some advertisements for Apollo Tyres’ variant ‘Apterra AT2’ shared through YouTube, Instagram, X, LinkedIn and Facebook portray ‘Crossdrive AT’ in a negative light.

“The balance of convenience is in favour of the plaintiff (CEAT Ltd),” Justice RI Chagla observed in his 16-page interim order. “Unless reliefs as prayed for are granted, the Plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm/injury which cannot be compensated in terms of money.”

In its order of September 12, which was recently uploaded, the court also noted that the defendant (Apollo Tyres) was not present despite notice.

The court will hear the case further on October 11.

Before the court’s order, CEAT Tyre, through Senior Advocate Virag Tulzapurkar and counsel Hiren Kamod, argued before the court that Apollo Tyres’ advertisement when looked at in its entirety seeks to portray the plaintiff’s (CEAT) ‘Crossdrive AT’ tyre in a bad light when compared with its brand new Apollo ‘Apterra AT2’ tyre.The company, through its counsels, argued that the use of the spoken words ‘See-It, See-It’ and ‘Seth’ in the advertisement, being phonetically identical and deceptively similar to the RPG Group-owned company’s trade mark CEAT, constitute an infringement of the plaintiff’s trade mark under Section 29(9) of the Trade Marks Act.The Harsh Goenka promoted company further argued that the defendant’s (Apollo Tyres’) advertisement makes use of two Thar SUV cars, one black and the other maroon, parked alongside each other. While the black car reveals worn-out tyres, claimed to be the CEAT’s Crossdrive AT make, the maroon car reveals the respondent’s brand-new Apollo Apterra AT2 tyres in a very disparaging manner.

While granting temporary relief to CEAT, the court, however, observed that it is a settled law that a tradesman is entitled to declare his goods to be the best in the world or to say that his product is better than those of his competitors.

“However, while doing so, he cannot directly or indirectly say that the goods of his competitors are bad or inferior and if he does so, then he really slanders the goods of his competitors and defames his competitors and their goods which is not permissible,” it said.

Recently, in a similar case, the court also directed Abbott Laboratories to temporarily stop circulating advertisements that allegedly disparage Hindustan Unilever’s Horlicks Diabetes Plus until further order.