Section 134 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 bars the institution of specified trademark suits before any court inferior to a District Court, yet several High Courts, exercising powers under the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, have notified Courts of Civil Judge (Senior Division) as Commercial Courts for disputes within particular pecuniary limits — including trademark suits.
A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran found an apparent conflict between the two statutory regimes and referred to a larger Bench the question whether a State notification under the Commercial Courts Act can empower a Civil Judge below the District Court to hear trademark infringement suits, so that the law can be applied uniformly across states rather than turning on which state's notification a litigant happens to fall under.
Trademark litigants across India face inconsistent answers, state by state, on whether their infringement suit can validly be heard by a Commercial Court judge below District Court rank — this reference should produce a single, nationwide rule on which forum has jurisdiction.