Text Size:
New Delhi: The Madras High Court Thursday barred Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved from using the trademark ‘Coronil’ for a drug it developed and marketed as a cure for the novel coronavirus.
The court’s order came while hearing a suit filed by a Chennai-based firm which claimed that ‘Coronil’ is a trademark owned by it since 1993. The company’s registered trademark, called ‘CORONIL-92 B’, is an acid inhibitor product to clean heavy machinery and chemical preparations for industrial use.
The plaintiff company said it had renewed its trademark till 2027.
The high court observed, “The defendants have invited this litigation on themselves. A simple check with the Trade Marks Registry would have revealed that ‘Coronil’ is a registered trademark. If they had, and had still, with audacity, used the name ‘Coronil’, then they deserve no consideration at all.”
While making absolute an interim injunction passed earlier against Patanjali, Justice C.V. Karthikeyan also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on the company.
Even though it claims to be a Rs 10 crore company, said the judge, Patanjali has been “chasing further profits by exploiting the fear and panic among the general public by projecting a cure for the coronavirus, when actually their ‘Coronil Tablet’ is not a cure but rather an immunity booster for cough, cold and fever.”
The court ordered the fine amount to be equally divided between the Adyar Cancer Institute and the Government Yoga and Naturopathy Medical College and Hospital in Arumbakkam by 21 August.
We are deeply grateful to our readers & viewers for their time, trust and subscriptions.
Quality journalism is expensive and needs readers to pay for it. Your support will define our work and ThePrint’s future.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
Also read: How Ramdev’s Coronil makes social media’s fight against misinformation more difficult
‘No material to show Patanjali Coronil cures coronavirus’
On 17 July, the Madras High Court had passed an ex-parte interim injunction against Patanjali Ayurved for using the trademark, noting that similarity in the name was “obvious”.
“The name used by the defendant is the same. The spelling is the same,” the court had then observed.
On Thursday, the court said that Patanjali and Divya Yog Mandir Trust, also owned by Ramdev, had infringed upon the plaintiff’s trademark. It also pointed out that Patanjali has only applied for the trademark.
The court further asserted that Patanjali had “not shown due cause” in naming its product as ‘Coronil’.
“…there was no direct material produced to show that it is a treatment for coronavirus and even the reports in this connection, projecting such a cure, have been adversely noted by the Ministry of Ayush, New Delhi,” said the court.
Also read: Coronil got approval to treat cough and fever, but Patanjali sold it as ‘Covid cure’
Subscribe to our channels on YouTube & Telegram
News media is in a crisis & only you can fix it
You are reading this because you value good, intelligent and objective journalism. We thank you for your time and your trust.
You also know that the news media is facing an unprecedented crisis. It is likely that you are also hearing of the brutal layoffs and pay-cuts hitting the industry. There are many reasons why the media’s economics is broken. But a big one is that good people are not yet paying enough for good journalism.
We have a newsroom filled with talented young reporters. We also have the country’s most robust editing and fact-checking team, finest news photographers and video professionals. We are building India’s most ambitious and energetic news platform. And we aren’t even three yet.
At ThePrint, we invest in quality journalists. We pay them fairly and on time even in this difficult period. As you may have noticed, we do not flinch from spending whatever it takes to make sure our reporters reach where the story is. Our stellar coronavirus coverage is a good example. You can check some of it here.
This comes with a sizable cost. For us to continue bringing quality journalism, we need readers like you to pay for it. Because the advertising market is broken too.
If you think we deserve your support, do join us in this endeavour to strengthen fair, free, courageous, and questioning journalism, please click on the link below. Your support will define our journalism, and ThePrint’s future. It will take just a few seconds of your time.
Support Our Journalism
Source: https://theprint.in/judiciary/patanjali-cant-use-coronil-trademark-says-madras-high-court-fines-it-rs-10-lakh/476461/
