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Introduction
Trademark infringement is usually thought of in territorial terms. A registered mark protects its owner within the jurisdiction where it is registered. Someone who sells goods under that mark in that jurisdiction without authorisation infringes. The analysis gets complicated, though, when the goods never reach the domestic market at all. They are manufactured in India, the mark is affixed to them in India, and they leave immediately for sale in another country.
Is that infringement of the Indian mark?
The argument that it is not has real surface appeal. The Indian consumer never encounters the goods. The Indian market is never confused. The registered mark's function within India is arguably untouched. On this logic, a domestic manufacturer exporting goods under someone else's Indian mark should face liability in the destination country, if anywhere, not in India.
The Madras High Court's Division Bench rejected that logic in its decision in M/s V.V.V. & Sons Edible Oils Ltd. v. M/s Meenakshi Overseas LLC & Connected Matters. The ruling, delivered in a batch of appeals arising from a prolonged dispute over the well-known Idhayam sesame oil mark, holds that the act of affixing a trademark in India on goods destined for export is itself trademark use in India. The export destination is irrelevant. Every such affixation constitutes a fresh cause of action under the Trade Marks Act, 1999.
For manufacturers engaged in export-oriented production, the implications of this ruling extend well beyond sesame oil.
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Background: The Idhayam Brand and the US Dispute
V.V.V. & Sons Edible Oils Ltd. has marketed sesame oil under the Idhayam brand since 1943, when the business was founded as a firm by V.V.V. Rajendran in Virudunagar, Tamil Nadu. The company converted into a limited company in 2008 and registered the trademark "Idhayam" at the Trade Marks Registry in Mumbai in the same year. The brand exports to dozens of countries and generates revenue well into the hundreds of crores.
The dispute with Meenakshi Overseas LLC, a US-based entity, began when VVV discovered that Meenakshi Overseas had obtained registration of the "Idhayam" mark in the United States. VVV's position was that this registration had been obtained through misrepresentation, and that Meenakshi Overseas was also connected to the registration of several other well-known Indian brands in the US, a pattern that pointed to deliberate appropriation rather than independent development.
On the Indian side of the transaction, VVV alleged that Shivaraja Impex Company and Damodar Foods, both India-based entities, were affixing the Idhayam mark (or confusingly similar marks) on sesame oil products in India and exporting those goods to the United States for sale through or in connection with Meenakshi Overseas. The Indian manufacturers were, in VVV's case, the more immediately actionable defendants, because the act of affixation was happening in India under VVV's registered Indian trademark.
The Litigation Trail
Several proceedings arose from these allegations, and the case's procedural history is as significant as its substantive outcome.
VVV filed C.S. No. 726 of 2017 against Meenakshi Overseas, Shivaraja Impex, and Damodar Foods. The Single Judge rejected the plaint under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 on the grounds that it did not disclose a valid cause of action and that VVV had suppressed material facts relating to earlier proceedings in the United States. A separate suit, C.S. No. 434 of 2017, which involved Damodar Foods, was similarly dismissed. Each rejection created a fresh appeal.
Parallel litigation also proceeded in the United States. VVV had initiated proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) and had also filed a federal district court suit. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit eventually reversed a district court dismissal, holding that a prior TTAB proceeding could not preclude VVV's infringement claims because the TTAB has no authority to grant injunctive relief or damages.
The Indian litigation, meanwhile, wound its way through multiple rounds of appeal. The batch of appeals heard by the Madras High Court Division Bench in 2025 to 2026 consolidated O.S.A. Nos. 63 and 64 of 2019, O.S.A. (CAD) No. 23 of 2022, and O.S.A. Nos. 139 and 140 of 2025.
What the Defendants Argued
The defendants advanced several grounds for sustaining the Order VII Rule 11 rejections, most of which turned on procedural and jurisdictional questions.
On the export-infringement question specifically, their position was that affixing a mark in India on goods intended solely for the US market did not constitute use of the trademark in India in any meaningful sense. The goods would not be sold in India. No Indian consumer would be exposed to them. The mark's territorial function within India was not engaged, and any infringement that might be said to have occurred was a matter for US law, not the Trade Marks Act, 1999.
They also argued res judicata: that the US proceedings, particularly the TTAB proceedings, had already adjudicated on the same issues, and the Indian courts should not permit relitigation. On the procedural side, they contended that the plaint in C.S. No. 726 of 2017 had failed to disclose a valid cause of action and had suppressed material facts, justifying rejection at the threshold.
The Court's Analysis
Order VII Rule 11 and the Threshold for Rejection
The Division Bench's most important procedural holding is about the scope of Order VII Rule 11 CPC, the provision allowing courts to reject a plaint at the outset if it discloses no cause of action. The Court reaffirmed the well-settled principle that this power must be exercised by reading the plaint on its face, taking the averments as stated, and not looking beyond those averments or drawing on external evidence.
Courts cannot decide disputed questions of fact and law at this threshold stage. If the plaint, read as a whole, discloses a cause of action even in barest outline, the court must let it proceed to trial. The Single Judge's rejection had, in the Court's assessment, exceeded this narrow jurisdiction by treating the US proceedings and the plaintiff's conduct as factors going to rejection, without allowing for the possibility that a trial might resolve those factual disputes in VVV's favour.
Export Affixation as Trademark Use in India
On the substantive question, the Court's holding is clear. Section 29 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 defines infringement in terms of a person using a registered mark without authorisation. Section 2(2)(b) of the Act includes within the meaning of "use" the application of a mark to goods or the packaging of goods.
The physical act of applying a trademark to goods takes place at a specific location. When a manufacturer in Chennai affixes the Idhayam mark to bottles of sesame oil, that act occurs in India, on Indian soil, by a person operating within Indian territory. The Trade Marks Act governs that act, not the law of whatever country the bottles eventually travel to.
The Court rejected the defendants' contention that the absence of domestic market exposure negated the infringement. The statutory definition of use is not conditioned on domestic sale or domestic consumer exposure. It is conditioned on the act of application. Once that act occurs in India in relation to a registered mark, the cause of action crystallises in India. The export destination of the goods that follow from that act does not retroactively undo the infringement.
The Court went further: each individual act of affixation is a separate infringement, giving rise to a fresh cause of action. The continuing nature of the defendants' activities, affixing the mark on each shipment, meant that each shipment generated a new, independent basis for the plaintiff to sue. VVV was not time-barred in respect of any shipment that fell within the limitation period.
Also read: IndiaMart Trademark Case
Res Judicata and Foreign Proceedings
The defendants' argument that US proceedings had already decided the matter was rejected for reasons that track the Ninth Circuit's own reasoning. The TTAB proceedings in the United States were limited to questions of registration. The TTAB has no jurisdiction to adjudicate infringement, grant injunctions, or award damages. A finding by the TTAB, whether in favour of or against either party, could not bind an Indian court on the question of whether Indian trademark rights were infringed. Indian trademark law confers rights through Indian registration, and those rights are enforceable before Indian courts regardless of what happens in foreign proceedings.
The Court also observed that the rights VVV asserted in the Indian suits were based on Indian registrations. Foreign registrations, whether by VVV or by Meenakshi Overseas, were legally irrelevant to the Indian infringement claim. Two parallel systems of trademark protection operate independently.
Result
The Division Bench allowed the batch of appeals. The plaint rejections and suit dismissals were set aside. The matters were remitted for trial. VVV's suits will now proceed to a full-fledged hearing on the merits.
Conclusion
The export-infringement holding in VVV Sons v. Meenakshi Overseas settles what had been, in practical terms, an open question. Some manufacturers had operated on the assumption that producing goods for export in India was a different legal proposition from selling goods in India. The Indian trademark could not reach them because the goods never reached Indian consumers. The Madras High Court has closed that gap. The moment a mark is affixed in India, Indian trademark law applies. The ship, the flight, the customs declaration, the destination, none of these matter to the cause of action that arises at the moment of application.
Where goods are produced in India under marks held by Indian proprietors, the Indian trademark owner has a live cause of action even if the goods are heading to the US, the UK, the Gulf, or Southeast Asia. The manufacturer cannot shelter behind the fact that no Indian consumer will ever see the product.
The case is also instructive on the res judicata question. Indian and foreign trademark systems are parallel and independent. A loss at the TTAB or in a US district court does not exhaust the Indian cause of action. Indian registered rights are vindicated in Indian courts.
There is a broader point here worth noting. Trademark law in the era of export-oriented manufacturing cannot treat the domestic market as the only relevant sphere. A brand built over decades in India is not adequately protected if its mark can be freely applied in Indian factories for export, so long as the goods do not come back. That would create a perverse incentive structure: infringe the mark domestically for export, keep the product out of India to avoid domestic proceedings, and let the foreign trademark registration do the commercial work. The Madras High Court's ruling forecloses that structure.
That, in the end, is what makes this decision significant beyond its particular facts.
Must Read: Alkem v. Numen Pharma Case
~ Adv. Koushik Chittella
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Disclaimer: None of the contents of this post constitute legal advice.