A Division Bench of Justices V. Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora has dismissed Parle's Letters Patent Appeal and affirmed registration of the '20-20' biscuit trademark in favour of Avon Agro, whose 'proposed to be used' application, filed 27 September 2007, predated Parle's own application by just one week, even though Avon Agro never actually used the mark for 17 years while Parle built pan-India goodwill through continuous sales of its own '20-20' biscuits since 2007-08.
The Court held that trademark priority under Section 18 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 is governed strictly by the application filing date, and cannot be defeated by a rival's later commercial use, even extensive, long-running use that has built genuine market goodwill in the intervening years.
The ruling is a stark reminder to brand owners that market goodwill or prior commercial use will not by itself trump a rival's earlier-filed application, however dormant that earlier filing remained: the discipline has to run the other way, with businesses actively auditing the register and opposing conflicting applications promptly, rather than relying on established use as a fallback defence years later.