In Saumindra Bhattacharya v State of Bihar the Supreme Court recently quashed criminal proceedings initiated against a Coca-Cola company official. The charge had been brought under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954, and allegedly involved spurious Limca. The court set aside an earlier Patna High Court judgment, which refused to quash proceedings against Saumindra Bhattacharya, the manager of Coca-Cola’s Patna bottling plant. (The high court had, however, quashed proceedings against the company’s president and consumer affairs coordinator.)
The Supreme Court quashed the criminal proceedings against Bhattacharya on technical grounds, holding that prosecution could not be initiated unless the complaint was accompanied by a report by the public analyst. In this case, an individual who is also a legal advocate bought three bottles of Limca and fell sick after drinking one.
He complained to Coca-Cola, which owns the Limca trademark, that the bottles contained a foreign substance and received a reply stating that the bottles may have been tampered with.
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The update of court judgments is compiled by Bhasin & Co, Advocates, a corporate law firm based in New Delhi. The authors can be contacted at lbhasin@bhasinco.in or lbhasin@gmail.com. Please note that the item titled “Google search sparks trademark trouble” was contributed by Nishith Desai Associates, a Mumbai-based law firm. Readers should not act on the basis of this information without seeking professional legal advice.
