Case: Bharat Glass Tube Limited Vs. Gopal Glass Works Limited

3. In order to appreciate the controversy involved in the present appeal, a few facts may be dilated here. The respondent herein claimed to carry on business inter alia of manufacture and marketing of figured and wired glass sheets since 1981. The respondent claimed to be the originator of new and original industrial designs, applied by mechanical process to glass sheets. According to the respondent, the glass sheets have eye catching shape, configuration, ornamental patters, get up and colour shades and the same were registered and/or were awaiting registration as industrial designs under the Designs Act, 2000 (hereinafter to be referred to as the Act of 2000) and the Rules framed thereunder. For production of glass sheets of the design registered as Design No.190336, two rollers are required. The rollers are manufactured by M/s. Dorn Bausch Gravuren GMBH of Germany (hereinafter to be referred as the German Company). According to the respondent the rollers are not only used for manufacture of glass sheets, but for various other articles including plastic, rexin and leather. The respondent placed an order on the German Company for supply of the rollers for launching a design of figured glass with new and novel features not produced before by anyone else. On or about 29.10.2002 the respondent applied to the Controller of Patents and Designs under Section 51 of the Act of 2000 for registration of the said design in ClassThe said design was duly registered on 5.11.2002 and was to remain valid for a period of 10 years from the date of its registration. The respondent claimed the exclusive copyright in India on the said design applied to glass sheets. It was claimed that no other person has any right to apply the said design to glass sheets as the respondent has exclusive right over the said design on the glass sheets. The respondent marketed the glass sheets of the said design under the name of Diamond Square and that became popular amongst the customers soon after its launch in the market. After registration of the said design the respondent issued a notice on 21.5.2003 cautioning other manufactures from infringing copyright of the respondent in respect of the said registered design. But in the meanwhile the appellant and its associate IAG Co. Ltd. started imitating the said registered design, as a result thereof the respondent was constrained to file a suit being Civil Suit No.1 of 2004 against the appellant in the District Court of Mehsana. The respondent obtained a restraint order restraining IAG Co. Ltd. from infringing the copyright of the respondent against the said design. In order tothe suit, the appellant herein filed an application under Section 19 of the Act of 2000 before the Controller of PatentsDesigns for cancellation of registration of Design No.190336 in the name of the respondent mainly on the ground that the design has already been previously published in India and abroad and on the ground that the design was not new or original. The appellant primarily relied on a catalogue of the German Company and letter dated 10.9.2003 of the German company addressed to M/s. IAG Co. Ltd. the holding company of the appellant stating that the said German Company had developed designin the year 1992 and the other evidence relied on by the appellant was a document downloaded from the internet from the official website of the Patent Office of the United Kingdom on 22.9.2004 which indicated that the same design had been registered in United Kingdom in the name of M/s. Vegla Vereinigte Glaswerke Gmbh sometime in 1992. As against this the respondent filed an affidavit stating that the German Company has been engaged in the manufacture of engraving rollers and no other goods and it was contended that the company was not engaged in manufacture of the goods other than engraving rollers. It was contended that the company never manufactured engraved glass sheets by using engraved rollers. The respondent also relied on the communication dated 4.3.2004 of the German company confirming that the embossing rollers covered by Designhad been sold to the respondent on condition that all user rights available in India under Indian laws would vest exclusively in the respondent and that the respondent would be entitled to exclusive user rights for at least five years. The German company was aware of the registration of the Design No.190331 and it had no objection to the design being marketed by the respondent herein. An affidavit was also filed by the Liaison Executive of the respondent company that he visited Germany and upon enquiry ascertained that M/s. Vegla Vereinigte Glaswerke Gmbh had never manufactured glass sheets of the design registered as Design No.2022468 in the United Kingdom. The respondent also objected to the admissibility of the materials alleged to have been downloaded from the United Kingdom Patent Office. It was also contended that in absence of corroborative evidence, such evidence cannot be tendered and it cannot be treated as admissible evidence. It was also contended that the German Company only manufactured rollers but did not produceprepared out of these rollers.

Court's reasoning:
Therefore, the concept of design is that a particular figure conceived by its designer in his mind and it is reproduced in some identifiable manner and it is sought to be applied to an article. Therefore, whenever registration is required then those configuration has to be chosen for registration to be reproduced in any article. The idea is that the design has to be registered which is sought to be reproduced on any article. Therefore, both the things are required to go together, i.e. the design and the design which is to be applied to an article. In the present case, the design has been reproduced in the article like glass which is registered. This could have been registered with rexin or leather. Therefore, for registration of a particular configuration or particular shape of thing which is sought to be reproduced on a particular article has to be applied. As in the present case the design sought to be reproduced on ahas been registered and there is no evidence to show that this design was registered earlier to be reproduced on glass in India or any other part of the country or in Germany or even for that matter in United Kingdom, therefore, it is for the first time registered in India which is new and original design which is to be reproduced on glass sheet. Therefore, the submission of learned senior counsel for the appellant, Mr.Gupta cannot be accepted that this design was not new and original.9. In this connection, our attention was invited to the decisions of the Delhi High Court in 1981 PTC 239 [M/s. Domestic Appliances and Others v. M/s. Globe Super Parts] and 1983 PTC 373[ The Wimco Ltd. Bombay v. M/s. Meena Match Industries, SivakasiOrs.]. In M/s. Domestic AppliancesOrs., M/s. Globe Super Parts, Faridabad manufactured gas tandoors and they got the design registered in respect of gas tandoor. The petitionersM/s. Domestic AppliancesOrs. also manufacture gas tandoors under the trade mark Sizzler. They were selling the same in Delhi market. The respondent filed a suit against the petitioners alleging inter alia infringement of the design and obtained temporary injunction restraining the petitioners from selling the seasonal goods. The petitioners filed an application under Section 51A of the Designs Act, 1911 for cancellation of the design No.145258 before the Controller of Designs, Calcutta. The cancellation was sought on the allegations that the design No.145258 wasin India on the date of registration in as much as the respondents themselves were manufacturing and selling the gas tandoors earlier to the date of application for registration of design No.145258 and sold the same to various parties in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, JammuUttar Pradesh and also advertised the said supercook gas tandoor in several newspapers. It was also alleged that the respondents were not the originators or the owners of the design. Therefore, it should be cancelled. This was resisted by the respondents. Similarly in this case here also it was alleged that this application has been filed as a counterblast to the suit filed by the respondent and it was also pleaded that the petitioners were not interested in cancellation of the design. In the suit certain issues were framed and the High Court held that there was no definite evidence produced by the parties that the design had been previously registered in India. It was also held that the respondents were manufacturing the gas tandoors of the impugned design prior to 1977 and ultimately the Court held that the gas tandoors of the impugned design had been sold prior to the date of its publication. In other words the design had been published for the first time in India in 1977. Therefore, this case was decided purely on the question of fact and no ratio has been laid down. Similarly in 1983 PTC 373, this was a case by the Wimco Limited, a public limited company which carried on business of manufacturing and selling match boxes. It was claiming that they were one of the famous manufacturers of matches and they developed a design and gave it a name as HOTSPOT and made an application for registration under the provisions of the Designs Act,1911 and the same was registered. Thereafter a suit was instituted against M/s. Meena Match Industries, M/s. Thilgaraj Match Works and Ms. SanjayCo to restrain the defendants from manufacturing, producing, selling and/or marketing or offering for same match boxes bearing the impugned pattern/ design on the match boxes. After review of the evidence on record the Court held that the design given to M/s. Wimco was liable to be cancelled on the ground that it has been published in India prior to the date of registration and the design was not a new or original one. Therefore, this was also decided basically on the question of fact. Similarly in the present case, as we have discussed above, that this design which was registered in the name of M/s. Gopal Glass Works was not published in India or in Germany. Therefore, it was a new and original design.The next evidence which was lead by the appellant was a website had been downloaded from the United Kingdom Patent Office effecting patent that may be applied to glass sheets. No evidence has been produced to show that M/s.Vegla Vereinigte Glaswerke Gmbh had manufactured this design in glass sheet or not. It is only a design downloaded from the website of the Patent office in U.K. and it is not known whether it was reproduced onin U.K. or not. In this connection, the Assistant Controller has only observed that he has made a visual comparison of the U.K. registered design No.2022468 with the impugned design No.190336 and he was satisfied that both the designs make same appeal to the eye and there was sufficient resemblance between the two designs. Therefore, the Assistant Controller held that the impugned design was prior published and it could not be said to be new or original. The Assistant Controller further observed that the proprietor of this design had not been able to make a difference between the U.K. design and the present design. This was not accepted by learned Single Judge of the Calcutta High Court and for the good reason. It was observed by learned Single Judge as under:"The illustrations in the form of drawings downloaded from the website of the United Kingdom Patent Office depict the patterns that may be applied to glass sheets. The patterns may be same but the illustrations do not give the same visual effect as the samples of the glass sheets produced by the appellant in Court. There are also no clean unmistakable instructions or directions for production of glass sheets of the pattern illustrated.The visual effect and/or appeal of a pattern embossed into glass sheets by use of embossing rollers could be different from the visual effect of the same pattern etched into glass sheets manually. The respondent no.1 has not considered these factors.The order impugned considered with the materials on record, including in particular the computer print outs clearly reveals that the respondent no.1 has only compared the pattern and/or configuration considered the visual appeal thereof, but not the visual appeal of the pattern and/or configuration on the article. In other words, the Respondent No.1 has not considered the visual appeal of the finished product.There are no materials on record to show that the design had previously been applied to glass sheets. On the other hand, an affidavit was sworn on behalf of the appellant by a Liaison Executive affirming that he had ascertained that the proprietor of the design registered in the United Kingdom had never manufactured glass sheets of the design registered."From this it appears that in fact the pattern of the design which is reproduced on theand the design and the pattern which was reproduced on theof the United Kingdom was not common. The affidavit sworn on behalf of the respondent herein, the liaison Executive that he had ascertained from the proprietor of the design registered in United Kingdom and they have never manufacturedof the design registered. This affidavit evidence of the Liaison Executive of the respondent company has remainedSecondly, the learned Assistant Controller has not properly compared the two designs that on what comparison he found that the same configuration or pattern are identical with that of the impugned design. Simply by saying visually one can liable to commit the mistake but if the comparison is to be judged whether the pattern of the United Kingdom and that of the present pattern is three dimension or not. Both the designs were placed before us as was done before the High Court also. Learned Single Judge recorded its finding after seeing both the designs that there is distinguishable difference between the two. Similar attempt was made before us to show that both the designs i.e. one that is published in United Kingdom and the impugned design are identical. We have seen the original glass pattern produced before us and the photograph of the pattern produced on record. If the complainant was serious about the same, it could have produced the pattern which was reproduced on thein the United Kingdom and the pattern which is reproduced on theby the rollers of the design produced before us. If these twowere placed before learned Single Judge or before us we would have been able to record the finding. The finding recorded by the Assistant Controller is most inconclusive and it does not give us any assurance that it was a proper comparison of the two patters by the Assistant Controller. Learned Single Judge of the Calcutta High Court had occasion to go through both the patterns and found that there is no comparison. Likewise, thewere placed before us with all dimensions along with a copy of the print out of the United Kingdom and we are of opinion that there is no comparison between the two. From the visual appeal placed before us, learned Single Judge has rightly concluded that there is no comparison of pattern or configuration of two designs. We fully agree with the view taken by learned Single Judge. Hence on this count also the view taken by the Assistant Controller does not appear to be correct and the view taken by learned Single Judge of the Calcutta High Court is correct.