YouTuber Dhruv Rathee Agrees To Remove Reference To ‘REAL’ Fruit Juice In His Video: Suit Filed By Dabur Before Calcutta HC Settled
The Calcutta High Court has disposed of the suit filed by Dabut India Limited after the YouTuber Dhruv Rathee and Dabur reached a settlement over the reference or use of ‘REAL’ trademarks, copyright content, labels etc in his video.
The bench of Justice Krishna Rao noted, “Since the defendant no.1 is agreed to make that change at all places in the impugned video so as to remove any reference or use ‘REAL’ trademarks, copyright content, labels, packaging, advertisements as stated in paragraph 4 of the plaint, the plaintiff has no objections to the video being uploaded, published and/or broadcast with the aforesaid modifications.”
Advocate Debnath Ghosh appeared for the Appellant and Senior Advocate Ranjan Bachawat appeared for the Respondent.
By an earlier order, the Court has requested the parties to consider resolving the disputes in the suit by blurring out and/or removing fruit juice packets alleged to be that of identical and/or deceptively similar to that used by Plaintiff, Dabur India Limited.
The Court noted that the defendant Dhruv Rathee without prejudice to his rights and contentions, including, his right to freedom of speech and expression and to make fair comment, proposed to blur and/or use generic fruit juice packaging by an e-mail which was accepted in principle by the plaintiff by its e-mail.
The Court also noted that in furtherance of the above, the defendant forwarded a video containing the generic fruit juice packaging proposed to be used in the video in place of packaging alleged to be identical and/or deceptively similar to that of the plaintiff.
The Court noted that the parties agreed that no useful purpose would be served by keeping the suit and the applications pending and the suit itself may be disposed of in terms of the settlement agreed between parties.
Accordingly, the suit, including all the applications were disposed of and all issues, including the question of infringement and/or disparagement and defences of fair criticism and freedom of speech were not gone into by the Court.
Cause Title: Dabur India Limited v. Dhruv Rathee
Appearance:
Appellant: Adv. Debnath Ghosh, Adv. Biswaroop Mukherjee, Adv. Abir Debnath and Adv. Pradipta Bose
Respondent: Sr. Adv. Ranjan Bachawat, Adv. Satyaki Mukherjee, Adv. Nakul Gandhi, Adv. Yash Vardhan Deora, Adv. Eshna Kumar, Adv. Mujeeb Rahman, Adv. Neel Mason, Adv. Phiroze Edulji, Adv. Ankit Rastogi, Adv. Roustavi Mukherjee, Adv. Priyanka Bhattacharya And Adv. Amee Rana