Sale of Pakistani Rooh Afza Permanently Prohibited By the Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court “permanently restrained” several sellers from marketing identical products under the well-known Indian sherbet brand Rooh Afza after the Rooh Afza trademark owner, the Hamdard National Foundation, filed a lawsuit, claiming that an e-commerce website in India is selling the products of a Pakistani competitor.

This statement was made by a single judge bench of Justice Pratibha Singh in a trademark infringement lawsuit filed by plaintiffs Hamdard National Foundation and Hamdard Laboratories India. They claimed that a company called Golden Leaf was selling goods on Amazon India under the “Rooh Afza” mark that were not being sold by them.

According to the Hamdard National Foundation, the infringing product is manufactured in Pakistan and does not follow the guidelines outlined in the Legal Metrology Act of 2009, the Legal Metrology Act of 2006, or the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules of 2011. After Partition, his older son moved to India and the younger one to Pakistan, so Hakim Hafiz Abdul Majeed first met Rooh Afza in Delhi. While Hamdard National Foundation owns the rights to the beverage in India, Hamdard Laboratories (Waqf) manufactures it in Pakistan. The mark “ROOH AFZA” has been used by the plaintiffs on a variety of products, such as non-alcoholic sherbets and beverages, for which plaintiff No. 2 got the assignment from plaintiff No. 1 on August 11, 1975. The HC claims that one of the plaintiffs’ registrations for the mark ROOH AFZA was first filed on August 3rd, 1942.

The High Court ordered Amazon to take down the listings for Rooh Afza products made in Pakistan from its platform in India on September 5. The court noted that the food has been consumed by Indians for more than a century and that the Legal Metrology Act and the Food Safety and Standards Act’s relevant laws must be met by its quality requirements. Unexpectedly, the story stated, an imported product is being sold on Amazon without complete manufacturer information. The listings of infringing ‘ROOH AFZA’ products on the Amazon India website that are not from the Plaintiffs (Hamdard National Foundation) will be removed within 48 hours, Justice Singh said.

Hamdard National Foundation and Hamdard Laboratories India insisted that they were the rightful owners of the names “Hamdard” and “Rooh Afza” in their case, but they later discovered that numerous companies were offering products under the “Rooh Afza” brand on Amazon. The business recently discovered a seller advertising “Rooh Afza” bottles made in Pakistan, even though some of the listings had been removed after notices had been sent to the sellers and Amazon India, according to information provided to the court. The same did not follow Indian legal requirements, it was informed to the court. When a customer clicks the “Visit the Hamdard Store” link that is located next to the product listing of Golden Leaf, the seller of imported Rooh Afza on Amazon, they are taken to the website of Hamdard Laboratories India, according to the court’s order from September 5 in which it was made public.

Customers may confuse a Pakistani product for an Indian one, according to the HC. When the matter was called on November 11, the HC was notified that, as a result of the HC’s most recent ruling, Amazon India has provided the contact information for every vendor using its marketplace who was selling the disputed goods in their affidavit. The Hamdard National Foundation claims that all of the “infringing listings” have been deleted, satisfying their plea for redress. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, as revised this year, were required to be removed by Amazon India, and the six sellers who sold the infringing products there were permanently censured by the HC.