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Indian Performing Rights Society Ltd. v. Sanjay Dalia & Anr.

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal Nos. 10643-10644 of 2010)Decided 1 Jul 2015
Civil Appeal Nos. 10643-10644 of 2010
Justice J.S. Khehar · Justice Arun Mishra

Background

Two companies, a music licensing society and a magazine publisher, both headquartered/principally operating in Mumbai, filed infringement suits in Delhi, relying only on the fact that each maintained a branch office there, even though the actual infringement (cinema halls, magazine sale) occurred in Mumbai and Maharashtra, not Delhi. The defendants objected that Delhi had no real connection to the dispute, and the Delhi High Court agreed, holding the suits should have been filed in Mumbai. The plaintiffs appealed, arguing that special provisions in the Copyright and Trade Marks Acts let a plaintiff sue wherever it "carries on business," regardless of where the infringement occurred.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that Section 62 of the Copyright Act and Section 134 of the Trade Marks Act were designed to give plaintiffs an additional, more convenient forum, not a tool to drag defendants to a plaintiff's distant branch office when the plaintiff's own head office and the actual cause of action were both located elsewhere. The Court ruled that where a plaintiff's principal place of business is at a particular location and the cause of action has also arisen there, the suit must be filed at that place, not at a far-flung branch office merely because one exists: otherwise large companies with offices nationwide could misuse the provision to harass defendants by choosing an inconvenient forum. Applying this to the facts, since both companies had their principal offices and the actual infringement in Mumbai, the Delhi courts had no jurisdiction, and the appeals were dismissed.

Lesson Learnt

A company cannot use a mere branch office as a jurisdictional shortcut to sue a defendant far from where the real dispute actually occurred and from where the company itself is principally based: the "convenience of the plaintiff" provisions in IP law exist to help plaintiffs who would otherwise face hardship, not to let them forum-shop against defendants.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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