Toothpaste wars: Delhi High Court quashes forgery case filed by Anchor against Colgate

The Delhi High Court recently quashed a forgery case filed by Anchor toothpaste against Colgate toothpaste and its office bearers [Colgate Palmolive Company & Ors v State of NCT & Anr + Connected matters]..Anchor had alleged that Colgate forged trademark registration documents and presented them to the court. Justice Amit Sharma quashed the complaint case and the magistrate court's summoning order of April 2, 2012.The Court said that there was nothing to suggest that Colgate had committee forgery. “Given the aforesaid discussion, CC No. 7/2/09 titled ‘Anchor Health and Beauty Care Pvt Ltd v KV Vaidyanathan & Ors‘ and the impugned summoning order dated 02.04.2012 passed by the learned Metropolitan Magistrate are set aside and quashed,” the High Court ordered.The Court took into account the fact that Anchor had also filed an application under Section 340 of Code of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) before the High Court and that application contained the same allegations as its complaint before the magistrate.Section 340 CrPC confers power on court to order preliminary enquiry into offences relating to documents given in evidence.Justice Sharma concluded that an inquiry under Section 340 of the CrPC, as prayed for by Anchor, cannot be separated from the alleged forgery with respect to the documents in question.“In view of the above, this Court is of the considered opinion, as alleged by Anchor, in the same course of transaction, two separate offences have been committed and for one set of offences, complaint of Court is mandatory and therefore it is not possible to split them up. In these circumstances, the complaint with regard to other set of offences for which no complaint of Court is required cannot be sustained. The present complaint would not be maintainable and the learned Metropolitan Magistrate could not have taken cognizance of the said complaint,” the Court held..Colgate and Anchor have been involved in legal disputes over the use of red and white coloured trademark for their toothpaste.As per Anchor’s case, Colgate after failing to get an interim injunction order, forged certain documents and then filed a suit claiming fresh cause of action.Anchor filed the complaint against Colgate and its office bearers before the trial court alleging that they have committed offences under Sections 191, 193, 196, 199, 200 & 209 (offences related to forging of documents and making false claims before court) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).It was alleged that the company and its office bearers colluded with each other and presented a forged and fabricated copy of the certificate of registration number and its copy for use in legal proceedings in a case filed before the Delhi High Court. .The magistrate issued summons to Colgate and others after prima facie finding that the copy of the certificate of registration of trademark and the certified copy of the certificate for use in legal proceedings were forged.However, the High Court disagreed with the trial court's finding and quashed the case..Senior Advocates Mukul Rohatgi, Arvind Nigam, Ramesh Gupta and Arvind Varma along with advocates Saif Khan, Achutan Sreekumar, Rishi Agrawala, Niyati Kohli, Pratham Vir Agarwal and Smridhi Sharma appeared for Colgate and its office bearers.Senior Advocate Sanjay Jain and advocates Harshita Sukhija, Palak Jain and Nishak Tripath appeared for Anchor.Advocates Kunal Khanna, Swastik Bisarya, Vridhi Pasricha, Pravav Prasoon and Prakash Walia appeared for GL Verma, the Deputy Registrar of trademarks.Additional Public Prosecutor Mukes Kumar appeared for Delhi Police..[Read Judgment]