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.