Reckitt Benckiser (India) Pvt. Limited & Anr. Vs Wipro Enterprises (P) Limited (Delhi High Court)
Summary: The Delhi High Court considered whether Wipro Enterprises (P) Limited’s television advertisement for Santoor Hand Wash disparaged Reckitt Benckiser (India) Pvt. Limited’s Dettol Hand Wash and whether depiction of a bottle resembling Dettol amounted to piracy of Reckitt’s registered design. The advertisement showed a mother washing her hands with Santoor, followed by her young daughter appreciating the softness of her mother’s hands. The mother then removed a bottle resembling Dettol from a shelf and replaced it with Santoor, accompanied by a voice-over stating that, compared with ordinary hand washes, Santoor contained the benefits of sandal which kept hands soft. Reckitt contended that the advertisement conveyed the message that Dettol lacked moisturising or skin-softening properties and thereby crossed the permissible limits of comparative advertising. Wipro maintained that the advertisement merely extolled Santoor and contained truthful statements that Santoor contained sandal and that sandal moisturised the skin.
The Court reviewed the principles governing comparative advertising, puffery, disparagement and misleading representations, including the distinction between permissible claims of superiority and impermissible denigration of a rival product. It held that an advertisement must be assessed as a whole and from the perspective of the reasonable viewer rather than by dissecting individual frames, words or expressions. While serious statements of fact must have a factual basis and must not be false or misleading, puffery and permissible exaggeration are allowed. The Court emphasized that the decisive question is the overall impression conveyed to the consumer and that a rival product need not be expressly named if it is otherwise identifiable. At the same time, the mere fact that an advertisement encourages consumers to choose the advertised product over another does not constitute disparagement.
