June 2026 was one of the busiest months Indian IP law has seen in recent years. The courts were active across all fields. The Delhi High Court alone delivered significant rulings on keyword bidding, pharmaceutical trademark similarity, SEP evidence standards, descriptive mark removal, and transborder reputation in a single month. Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, and Gujarat were equally productive. Outside the courtrooms, IP India granted GI status to Tezpur Litchi, the Jagannath Temple secured trademark registrations, PPL India was finally registered as a copyright society after years of legal uncertainty, and the government floated a proposal that could reshape how AI companies access copyrighted works for training. This roundup covers only Indian IP Law developments. Every entry is arranged by field so you can read what matters to your practice.
Trademarks
Alkem Laboratories Ltd. v. Numen Pharma Pvt. Ltd. (Bombay High Court)
Alkem sought an interim injunction against Numen Pharma for using the mark ALCIPRO, arguing it was deceptively similar to its registered mark ACIPROX. The core question was whether the two marks were similar enough to cross the threshold for interim relief in a pharmaceutical dispute. The Bombay High Court applied the bare possibility test, which governs pharma trademark cases in India and sets a far lower bar than the ordinary consumer standard used in other product categories.
The Court found that ACIPROX and ALCIPRO shared structural and phonetic resemblance in both their opening syllables and closing sounds, and that both covered the same drug class. It noted that in pharmaceutical contexts, the consequences of confusion extend beyond commercial loss to patient safety. That consideration tilted the balance sharply in favour of the registered mark holder at the interim stage. Interim injunction granted in favour of Alkem. Read the full case analysis here.
M/s V.V.V. & Sons Edible Oils Ltd. v. M/s Meenakshi Overseas LLC (Madras High Court)
This case settled a question that had remained open for some time. The defendant argued that affixing a trademark in India on goods destined entirely for export did not constitute trademark use in India and therefore could not give rise to an infringement claim. The Madras High Court rejected that reasoning and held that the act of affixation in India is itself a use of the mark under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, regardless of where the goods go after.
The Court grounded this finding in the statutory definition of use and the commercial reality that affixation in India is the point at which a mark is applied to goods and enters commerce. The export destination does not strip that act of its legal significance. This ruling closes an operationally significant gap for manufacturers who hold marks for export-oriented production. A triable issue was found and the matter was ordered to proceed to trial. Read the full case analysis here.
Hindware Ltd. v. Grohe India Pvt. Ltd. & Google LLC (Delhi High Court)
Grohe and other competitors had been bidding on the keyword “HINDWARE” through Google’s AdWords programme to intercept searches intended for Hindware. The keyword never appeared in the advertisement itself, and Google’s central defence was that invisible backend bidding did not amount to actionable trademark use because the consumer never saw the word. That defence had worked before, notably in MakeMyTrip v. Google LLC (2022).
The Delhi High Court in this 163-page judgment put that shield down. Justice Pushkarna held that Section 29(6)(d) of the Trade Marks Act covers use of a mark as part of a trade or business, and that running an auction of a trademark for commercial gain falls squarely within that provision. Google’s participation in the bidding mechanism made it a participant in the infringement, not a neutral conduit. The ruling is the most significant expansion of trademark liability for advertising platforms in India since keyword bidding cases began appearing in Indian courts. Read the full analysis here.
In Re Glass Skin Trademark Litigation (Delhi High Court)
A competitor challenged the registration of the phrase “GLASS SKIN” as a trademark in the skincare sector, arguing it was entirely descriptive and could not be monopolised by any single entity. The Court found that “Glass Skin” denotes a specific skin aesthetic popularised by the Korean beauty industry and functions as a description of a product benefit or result rather than as an indicator of source.
The Court held that no single entity can claim exclusive rights over a term generic to the trade unless it proves absolute acquired distinctiveness. That proof was not furnished here. The “GLASS SKIN” registration was cancelled and the phrase restored to public and industry use. Read the full case analysis here.
Moti Mahal Delux Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. v. Moti Mahal (India) Pvt. Ltd. and Others (Delhi High Court)
The Moti Mahal franchise dispute brought together two sets of complications that trademark disputes involving legacy family brands often generate. The plaintiff claimed exclusive rights over the Moti Mahal mark through prior use and registration. The defendants, former franchise partners, continued using the mark after the franchise arrangement broke down, arguing they had co-ownership rights arising from the family history of the mark.
The Delhi High Court, examining the franchise agreement and the registration history, found that continued post-termination use of the mark by a former franchisee amounts to infringement regardless of any co-ownership claim that is not backed by registered co-proprietorship. The case is a clear reminder that family heritage over a mark is not the same as legal title to it, and that franchise relationships require carefully drafted exit clauses to avoid exactly the kind of prolonged litigation that followed here. Read the full analysis here.
Rajinder Singh v. Registrar of Trade Marks (Delhi High Court)
Rajinder Singh challenged adverse action against his trademark renewal after a six-year gap. The O-3 notice he had received was answered in time. The Trade Marks Registry had simply not processed that reply for approximately six years, and the Registrar sought to use the resulting delay as grounds against the mark’s renewal. The Delhi High Court found this unacceptable.
The Court held that an applicant who files a response to an O-3 notice in time cannot be penalised for the Registry’s failure to process it. Trademark rights cannot be forfeited because of institutional delay. The six-year renewal gap was excused and the Registrar was directed to process the mark accordingly. Read the full analysis here.
P.C. Duraisamy v. Kewal Krishan Kumar & Anr. (Delhi High Court)
Duraisamy, prior registrant and user of “SAKTHI” since 1977, filed to remove the mark “SHAKTI” (registered 2018) from the Register, arguing it was a paper registration filed to ride on his goodwill. The respondent argued that decades of use of “SHAKTI BHOG” should count as use of the standalone word “SHAKTI” under the Trade Marks Act.
The Court found the argument creative but factually hollow. The respondent had not produced a single invoice or document evidencing independent use of the standalone “SHAKTI” mark at any point from 1996 to 2018 or after. Use of a composite mark does not constitute independent use of a separately registered component word. The marks were phonetically and structurally identical, both meaning “power” or “energy,” with a real likelihood of confusion in Class 30. The “SHAKTI” mark was expunged under Sections 47(1)(a) and 57(2) of the Trade Marks Act. Read the full case analysis here.
Devans Modern Breweries Ltd. v. Cartel Bros Pvt. Ltd. (Delhi High Court)
Devans, proprietor of the “GODFATHER” mark for beer since the 1980s and for rum and whisky since 2005, sought to restrain Cartel Bros from using the same word for a Scotch whisky product backed by actor Sanjay Dutt. Cartel Bros proposed a composite mark “THE GLENWALK GODFATHER’S BY SANJAY DUTT” and argued that the celebrity subscript and the different product category distinguished it sufficiently.
The Court refused to accept this. It held that beer and whisky are allied and cognate goods sharing common trade channels, retail outlets, and excise regimes. It further held that when a composite mark embeds a registered word mark as its dominant element, reducing that element to a smaller font or adding a celebrity subscript does not dissolve its source-identifying character. The anti-dissection rule does not rescue a mark whose dominant feature remains recognisable as someone else’s registered mark. Ad-interim injunction granted against Cartel Bros. Read the full case analysis here.
Blue Cross Laboratories Ltd. v. Alto Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. (Bombay High Court)
Blue Cross Laboratories obtained a permanent injunction restraining Alto Healthcare from using the mark “MEFIAL-SPAS” and its associated packaging. The court found it deceptively similar to Blue Cross’s registered mark “MEFTAL-SPAS.” The suit proceeded undefended.
The Bombay High Court treated this as a unified infringement package covering both the mark and the trade dress together, refusing to separate them. It underscored the public health dimension that runs through every pharmaceutical trademark case. A one-letter substitution that produces a near-identical name in the same product category is not a meaningful distinction. Costs of Rs. 10 lakh were imposed. Read the full case analysis here. Read the full case analysis here.
Fortune Marketing Pvt. Ltd. v. Gujarat Pesticides & Ors. (Delhi High Court)
Fortune Marketing challenged a copyright registration obtained by Gujarat Pesticides for an artistic product label featuring the brand name “ZOOOK,” which Fortune argued infringed its existing trademark. The Copyright Office had issued a clean search certificate to the defendant without flagging Fortune’s prior trademark.
The Delhi High Court found that a copyright registration obtained through a defective search process cannot survive challenge if the underlying label incorporates another party’s registered trademark. Copyright registration does not override trademark rights and cannot function as a backdoor mechanism to legitimise what would otherwise constitute infringement. The court revoked Gujarat Pesticides’ copyright registration and reinforced the coordination requirement between the Copyright and Trademark registries.
IndiaMart Intermesh Ltd. v. Unknown Defendants & Cloud Hosts (Delhi High Court)
IndiaMart filed a suit against unknown defendants and several cloud hosting services after an OTP relay phishing scheme emerged that used fraudulent websites mimicking IndiaMart’s platform to intercept OTPs from genuine buyers and extract payments. The Delhi High Court examined whether cloud hosts that provided infrastructure to these phishing sites could claim safe harbour protection.
The Court found that cloud hosts with knowledge of hosting phishing infrastructure lose the benefit of safe harbour provisions. The interim order directed the cloud providers to take down the impersonation sites and cooperate in identifying the unknown defendants. The ruling extends the intermediary liability framework developed in earlier platform cases to cloud hosting services and sets a stricter notice-and-takedown expectation for infrastructure providers in phishing cases involving IP misuse. Read the full analysis here.
Robert A. Merry and Co. Ltd. v. Piccadily Agro Industries Ltd. (Delhi High Court)
The Irish whiskey maker behind “The Whistler” brand attempted to enter the Indian market in 2025 and filed a passing-off action when it found that Piccadily Agro, maker of the INDRI single malt, had been selling whiskey under the “WHISTLER” mark in India since 2018 with a domestic registration dating to 2008. Both parties filed cross-suits and the Court disposed of both applications together.
Justice Jyoti Singh held that Robert A. Merry had failed to establish that its transborder goodwill and reputation had spilled over into India before Piccadily’s commercial launch. Foreign trademark registrations, international sales, awards, and online presence are not, by themselves, sufficient to demonstrate Indian goodwill. The Court also found that the Irish company’s excise approvals for Delhi and Maharashtra had been obtained only in January 2026, which independently defeated any claim of reputation in India prior to 2018. Rejecting Robert A. Merry’s argument that the liquor advertising ban in India should lower the evidentiary threshold for proving spillover, the Court pointed out that several brands had successfully built Indian reputation through sponsorships, actual sales, and trade channels despite those restrictions.
On the infringement side, the Court found “The Whistler” and “Whistler” to be nearly identical marks applied to identical goods and granted an injunction in Piccadily’s favour restraining the Irish company from selling its products in India during pendency of the suits. The ruling is a careful restatement of the territoriality principle: being first in the world is not being first in India.
Honasa Consumer Ltd v. Visage Beauty and Health Care Pvt Ltd & Anr (Delhi High Court)
The case emerged after Visage Beauty (Respondent No. 1) issued a cease-and-desist notice to Honasa Consumer (Petitioner). Visage claimed that Honasa’s product, “AQUALOGICA DETAN + DEWY SUNSCREEN,” infringed upon its registered trademark “D-TAN” under Class 3. In response, Honasa filed a rectification petition under Section 57 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, seeking cancellation of Visage’s trademark on the grounds that “D-TAN” is a generic, common, and purely descriptive term in the cosmetics industry that denotes skin tan removal
The judgment ruled in favor of Honasa Consumer Ltd.. The Court declared that descriptive skincare terms cannot be monopolised by a single brand and that the mark was wrongly remaining on the official register. Consequently, Justice Gedela directed the Registrar of Trade Marks to cancel and remove the “D-TAN” trademark registration within four weeks from the receipt of the order.
Copyrights
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. v. Libas Consumer Products & Anr. (Delhi High Court)
Zee Entertainment filed against apparel brand Libas for using commercially licensed movie soundtrack audio files as background music in promotional Instagram Reels without paying synchronisation royalties. The dispute turned on whether the social media music library available to all users through Instagram’s built-in tools carries the same licensing scope for commercial promotions.
The Court found that individual users may access built-in music libraries for personal content, but commercial entities promoting products cannot rely on that access as authorisation for synchronisation use. A separate commercial synchronisation licence is required when the music serves a marketing purpose for a business. Further use of the tracks was halted and the dispute was referred to mediation to settle the outstanding licensing fee structure. Read the full case analysis here.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. v. Soccerbox.me & Ors. (Delhi High Court)
Zee Entertainment filed against dozens of rogue streaming sites broadcasting live sports feeds for which it held rights. The core problem was the nature of digital piracy in live broadcasting. Infringing sites clone domains and switch URLs in real time. A static injunction against named domains is obsolete by the time it is served.
The Court granted a dynamic injunction empowering internet service providers and telecom authorities to block mirror links, rogue domains including soccerbox.me, and new clone URLs as they surface during live broadcasts. The Court noted that live sports content loses its commercial value the instant the event ends, making real-time intervention the only effective remedy. Read the full case analysis here.
Sandip & Anr. v. State of Maharashtra & Anr. (Bombay High Court)
Two traders facing criminal prosecution under the Copyright Act for selling apparel bearing counterfeit Zara and Calvin Klein labels sought quashing of the FIR. The prosecution had framed its case under copyright law, but the accused argued that selling goods with counterfeit brand labels, without any claim to having authored or copied an artistic work, was a trademark offence rather than a copyright one.
The Bombay High Court agreed. Copyright protects original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. Selling goods bearing another’s brand label without manufacturing the goods or holding any authorship claim over them is a trademark violation, not a copyright infringement. The Court additionally found that the search and seizure had been carried out by a Sub-Inspector when the Trade Marks Act requires an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police for warrant-less searches. Both grounds independently vitiated the prosecution. The FIR, charge sheet, and criminal proceedings were quashed.
Telegram FZ LLC v. Union of India (Delhi High Court)
The Centre temporarily blocked Telegram across India ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21, citing organised misuse of the platform to circulate leaked question papers, coordinate cheating networks through automated bots, and create mirror channels that rebuilt themselves almost immediately after takedown. Telegram challenged the block under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Justice Tejas Karia, in a judgment delivered on June 19, upheld the blocking order. The Court found that Telegram’s architecture, specifically its large public channels capable of reaching two lakh members per post, its bot ecosystem allowing one user to run up to 40 bots, and its message-editing feature susceptible to backdating fraud, made it structurally distinct from other intermediaries and uniquely difficult to regulate through content-specific takedowns. Applying the four-part proportionality test from Anuradha Bhasin, the Court held that the temporary block until June 22 and the disabling of the message-editing feature until June 30 were narrowly tailored, time-limited, and addressed a legitimate public interest in examination integrity.
The significance of this ruling extends beyond NEET. It is the first time an Indian court has accepted that Section 69A, a provision drafted to block specific information, may be used to block an entire platform when the government demonstrates that the platform’s design itself makes content-specific blocking ineffective. The architectural liability logic the Court developed, judging not just the content on a platform but the platform’s design as a factor in assessing regulatory intervention, is a doctrinal development that intermediaries across sectors will need to understand and respond to.
PPL India Registered as Copyright Society for Sound Recordings
On June 11, 2026, the Registrar of Copyrights registered Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL India) as a copyright society for sound recordings under the Copyright Act, 1957. PPL India, an 85-year-old not-for-profit organisation representing approximately 500 music labels including T-Series, Sony Music, Universal Music, Times Music, and Lahari Music, had operated for years in a legal grey zone after a 2012 amendment to the Copyright Act triggered a decade of uncertainty about whether an unregistered body could legitimately collect licence fees.
During that period, many commercial establishments, including hotels, restaurants, retail outlets, and event venues, withheld licence fee payments on the ground that PPL lacked registered society status. The consequence was a systematic drain on royalties that would otherwise have reached label owners and associated artists. The June 11 registration resolves that uncertainty entirely. PPL now has unambiguous statutory authority to license the public performance and communication to the public of sound recordings and to pursue commercial establishments that use recorded music without a valid licence. Businesses that have been withholding payment should treat this registration as a hard compliance deadline.
Mandatory AI Training Blanket Licence Proposal – DPIIT / Ministry of Commerce
The Central Government circulated a proposal in June 2026 to introduce a mandatory blanket licensing mechanism that would allow AI companies to train models on copyrighted works subject to payment of royalties to rights holders. The proposal draws from the copyright exceptions debate that has dominated global AI policy discussions but takes a different approach from the opt-out systems proposed in some other jurisdictions.
Under the proposal as floated, AI developers would not need to negotiate individual licences but would pay into a royalty pool managed through an intermediary mechanism. Rights holders would receive distributions based on the extent to which their works were used. The proposal is at the consultation stage and has not yet become law, but it represents the clearest government statement yet on how India intends to handle the AI training data question.
Patents
Communication Components Antenna Inc. v. Rosenberger Hochfrequenztechnik GmbH & Co. KG (Delhi High Court)
The Delhi High Court, in a judgment decided in late March 2026 and widely reported in June, awarded damages of Rs. 152.32 crore to CCA against Rosenberger for infringement of a patent covering split-sector antenna technology for cellular infrastructure. Infringement was established through computational simulation. The Court upheld every claim of the patent and rejected every ground of revocation the defendants raised. This is one of the largest patent damages awards in Indian legal history.
The royalty rate was set at 20 per cent of total antenna sales, expressly calibrated above the rate in a comparable licence that Rosenberger’s competitor CommScope had taken, because Rosenberger had conducted no freedom-to-operate analysis before launching its products. The Court treated that failure as evidence of bad faith and held that a party which neither negotiates nor complies before infringing cannot claim the commercial benefit of rates available to those who did. The methodology applied here gives future courts a principled royalty framework for oligopolistic industrial markets. Read the detailed analysis.
K.K. Bansal v. Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV (Delhi High Court)
In a 150-page judgment delivered on 18 May 2026, the Division Bench set aside the 2018 single-judge decree that had directed two small DVD player makers to pay royalty to Philips for infringement of a Standard Essential Patent. The judgment rewrites the evidentiary template for SEP litigation in India and represents the most significant patent decision involving a standard essential patent since the first post-trial SEP decision that it now overturns.
The Division Bench found that Philips had not mapped the features of the defendants’ products to the patent’s claims in the manner required by Rule 3(A)(ix) of the Delhi HC patent suit rules, that its expert affidavit was inadmissible because the deponent was never produced for cross-examination, and that the defence of patent exhaustion under Section 107A(b) had more substance than the single judge had allowed. The case also noted that the defendants had purchased chips from authorised MediaTek vendors who supplied Philips itself, which raised a genuine exhaustion question that deserved proper analysis. Read the full case analysis here.
Qualyst Transporter Solutions v. Assistant Controller of Patents (Bombay High Court)
After a prior refusal was set aside for breach of natural justice because the applicant had not received advance notice of objections before a hearing, the matter went back to the Patent Office on remand. On remand, the Office introduced entirely new prior art references and fresh grounds of objection. Qualyst challenged this as exceeding the scope of the remand order.
The Bombay High Court held that where a remand order is limited to curing a breach of natural justice, the Patent Office may clarify or elaborate on existing objections but cannot introduce new prior art or entirely new grounds. Doing so would amount to reopening the examination, which was beyond what the remand permitted. The interim application was allowed. The Patent Office was directed to confine its re-examination to the existing record and to pass an order within eight weeks. Read the full case analysis here.
Shaafi Naturcure LLP v. Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs (Delhi High Court)
Shaafi Naturcure appealed the refusal of its patent for a six-herb powder formulation for treating asthma. Among its arguments was that its agreement with the National Biodiversity Authority under the Biological Diversity Act should override the Controller’s Section 3(p) objection, which bars traditional knowledge aggregations from patentability.
The Delhi High Court rejected this entirely. The Biological Diversity Act and the Patents Act operate in separate legal domains. NBA approval governs access to biological resources and benefit sharing. It has no bearing on whether a claimed invention satisfies patentability requirements under the Patents Act. The Court also held that an inventor’s post-filing affidavit cannot establish a technical effect for the first time if the specification never disclosed it. A combination of six herbs independently known for treating asthma was an obvious aggregation falling within Section 3(p) and lacked inventive step. The appeal was dismissed. Read the full case analysis here.
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft v. Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (Calcutta High Court)
Fraunhofer, the German research organisation, appealed the rejection of a patent for a method to stimulate biomass growth in a bioreactor. The application used open-ended functional language describing parameters that spanned minutes to months and contained no working examples. The Controller had also cited failure to disclose the source and geographic origin of the biological material used.
The Calcutta High Court upheld the rejection on two independent grounds. A specification that describes only functional results over ranges so wide that they require excessive experimentation to reproduce fails the enablement requirement under Section 10 of the Patents Act. On the second ground, the Court held that disclosure of the source and geographic origin of biological material used in any invention is mandatory regardless of whether the biomass itself is the claimed subject matter, citing India’s obligations under the Biological Diversity Act and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Non-disclosure independently disqualifies any such application. The appeal was dismissed.
SNPC Machines Pvt. Ltd. v. Vishal Choudhary (Delhi High Court)
The defendant in this brick-making machine patent case attempted to avoid infringement by replacing the tractor-mounted power mechanism specified in the patent with a bullock-driven alternative. The argument was that this change in the implementation mode took the product outside the scope of the patent’s claims.
The Division Bench applied the Pith and Marrow doctrine, also called the Doctrine of Equivalents. It held that changing the mode of implementation does not alter the substance of the invention if the essential features of the claim remain present. The invention’s revolutionary contribution lay in its core mechanical design, not in the specific power source. A superficial substitution of a non-essential peripheral element cannot be used to circumvent infringement liability. The interim injunction against the defendant was upheld.
Designs
M/s Satyam Fashion v. Meesho Technologies Private Limited & Ors. (Gujarat High Court)
A design infringement suit filed by Satyam Fashion against Meesho before the Surat Commercial Court turned into a jurisdictional question when Meesho raised a plea for cancellation of Satyam’s registered design as a defence. The Commercial Court had continued to hear and decide the interim injunction application despite the cancellation plea being on record.
The Gujarat High Court Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice D.N. Ray, set aside the Commercial Court’s order on June 16. It held that Section 22(4) of the Designs Act, 2000 is mandatory: once a defendant pleads cancellation of a registered design, the civil suit must be transferred to the High Court, and the Commercial Court loses all jurisdiction to decide even interlocutory relief. The transfer is a ministerial act, leaving no discretion. The Bench directed the Surat Commercial Court to transfer the suit to the High Court within one week of receiving its order.
The ruling has practical consequences for design infringement litigation strategy across India. A defendant who wishes to challenge the validity of a registered design should raise the cancellation plea early and in express terms, since that plea alone is sufficient to remove the matter from the Commercial Court. A plaintiff relying on a registered design should factor in the forum shift that follows and be prepared for the longer timeline that typically accompanies High Court proceedings. Litigants in states without ordinary original civil jurisdiction in the High Court should pay particular attention, since the transfer obligation applies regardless of which Commercial Court was originally seized of the matter.
What June 2026 Tells Us About Design Piracy Standards
June 2026 produced a body of decisions and commentary that together establish a clearer operating standard for how Indian courts evaluate design piracy claims at the interim stage. Three principles recur across the month’s caselaw. First, the test for ocular appeal under the Designs Act is objective, not subjective: a defendant cannot escape liability by asserting that the registered design lacks aesthetic appeal. Second, mosaicing prior art references to attack novelty remains impermissible, and each prior publication must be compared with the registered design as a whole. An invalidity challenge that relies on drawing features from seven different references, none of which individually discloses the suit design’s essential elements, will not succeed. Third, differences in peripheral or non-essential features do not save a defendant from a finding of piracy. Courts ask what the design’s novelty actually resides in and whether those specific elements have been substantially reproduced in the defendant’s product.
These three principles, now embedded in a series of High Court decisions across Bombay, Delhi, and Gujarat, are the operative framework for interim injunction applications in design cases going forward.
Geographical Indications
Tezpur Litchi Receives GI Tag – IP India
IP India granted the Geographical Indication tag to Tezpur litchi from Assam in the first week of June, establishing the formal legal link between the fruit and its region of origin. The certification gives producers a statutory basis to prevent traders outside the designated area from selling products under the Tezpur Litchi name.
The GI grant was followed immediately by export promotions. The Tezpur litchi was introduced to a Dubai trade audience on June 7 and to Singapore on June 9. On June 12, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma formally flagged off an export consignment. The GI tag gives this export push formal legal backing and creates the basis for future enforcement action against misrepresentation in Gulf and Southeast Asian markets.
Jagannath Temple, Puri – Three Trademark Registrations Granted
IP India registered three trademarks in the name of the Shri Jagannath Temple Administration in Puri this month, covering the marks Nilachakra, Ananda Bazaar, and Patitapabana. This is the first time a major Indian temple has obtained trademark registrations for names and symbols associated with its religious and cultural identity.
The registrations have a direct enforcement purpose. Traders and commercial operators have long used Jagannath temple imagery and related names for merchandise, food products, and tourism services without any formal licence. The trademark grants now give the temple administration a statutory basis to act against such use and to develop a licensing framework. Whether the administration will actively enforce these rights remains to be seen, but the registrations put the legal foundation in place.
Basmati GI – AIREA and BRMEA Challenge APEDA’s Law Firm Appointment
The All India Rice Exporters Association and the Basmati Rice Millers and Exporters Association of Punjab wrote to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and APEDA’s Chairman objecting to APEDA’s appointment of a new law firm to manage Basmati GI enforcement cases. The associations alleged the firm carries a conflict of interest because it previously represented petitioners who sought to include Madhya Pradesh areas in the Basmati GI zone, a position APEDA has opposed. APEDA maintained the appointment followed a proper tender process.
The dispute reflects a broader governance tension in how India manages GI enforcement for its most commercially significant agricultural products. Basmati is one of India’s most valuable export goods and its GI protection is the basis of considerable export revenue. The appointment of enforcement counsel for a GI with national economic significance is not a purely administrative matter. It carries policy implications for which producers benefit from enforcement activity and which legal arguments get prioritised in cross-border disputes.
Personality Rights and AI
Varun Dhawan v. Artist Booking Company & Ors. (Delhi High Court)
The Delhi High Court granted broad interim protection to actor Varun Dhawan against a pattern of digital exploitation that combined multiple forms of misuse in a single suit. The defendants had created fraudulent booking websites offering to secure Dhawan for live events, sold unauthorised merchandise bearing his name and image, and circulated AI-generated content including deepfake videos, some of a sexually explicit and pornographic nature, using his likeness without consent.
Justice Jyoti Singh, in an order passed on May 29 and widely reported from June 1, held that Dhawan’s name, likeness, voice, and image are protectable attributes of his personality and that their commercial exploitation by third parties without authorisation is unlawful. The Court directed an immediate takedown of infringing content across websites, social media accounts, and e-commerce platforms, with digital intermediaries including YouTube, Meta, Google, and X required to act within 36 hours of notification. It further directed Google and Meta to disclose basic subscriber information of accounts responsible for the infringing material.
Two features of this order are worth noting. The Court identified Iceposter as a habitual infringer across multiple celebrity cases, treating its repeat conduct as aggravating the case for interim relief. It also treated AI-generated pornographic content as a distinct category of personality rights harm requiring specific judicial response, rather than folding it into the general unauthorised use analysis. As deepfake generation tools become more accessible, the explicit recognition of pornographic deepfakes as a separate head of injury is a doctrinal step that future personality rights litigants are likely to rely on.
Preity Zinta v. Unknown Defendants (Bombay High Court)
The Bombay High Court granted leave to actor Preity Zinta to file a suit for injunction to protect her personality rights against AI-generated deepfakes and other unauthorised digital use of her likeness, voice, and image. The grant of leave at this stage does not decide the merits, but it confirms that the Bombay High Court is prepared to admit personality rights claims against AI-generated content, following the pattern established in earlier cases involving other public figures.
Each High Court admission of a personality rights claim in the AI deepfake context strengthens the emerging judicial consensus that public figures hold rights over their digital likenesses that can support injunctive relief. Indian statute law does not yet codify personality rights explicitly. These rulings are building the doctrine case by case, and Preity Zinta’s suit adds to a developing body of precedent that practitioners will need to navigate more often as AI-generated content becomes easier to produce and distribute.
Also Read: Indian IP Law Roundup July 2026 – AI Training, Trademarks, and Patents
References:
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/59419062026COT2152023_170934.pdf
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/59422062026SC3462026_173455.pdf
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/59424062026COT1802022_150651.pdf
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/59422062026CAP1092022_172418.pdf
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/68719062026CW82592026_124343.pdf
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/68715062026SC12017_185908.pdf
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/68715062026COT1202025_191236.pdf
- https://delhihighcourt.nic.in/app/showFileJudgment/59405062026COT1072025_173036.pdf
