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Synopsis

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed a contempt application filed by the Bennett Coleman Group against Republic TV and Arnab Goswami.

The bench of Justice C. Hari Shankar was hearing an application under Order 39 Rule 2A seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against ARG Outlier Media Private Limited and its directors.

Bennett Coleman & Co. Limited (BCCL) had filed a contempt application, alleging violation of the order dated October 23, 2020 whereby the court had refused to pass an interim order against usage of the tagline ‘NATION WANTS TO KNOW’.

In the October 2020 order, the high court while refusing to pass an interim order had however, directed the Republic/the defendants to maintain accounts of usage of the tagline in case the same is used as a trademark in relation to goods/services, and file the same by way of an affidavit once every six months. The operative part of the order reads thus:

“Regarding the tagline NATION WANTS TO KNOW, no interim order is passed at this stage in favour of the plaintiff. As submitted by the learned counsel for the plaintiff, defendant No. 2 is free to use the same as part of his speech/presentation of any news channel, etc. However, if the defendants choose to use the same as a trade mark with respect to any of their goods/services, the said defendants will maintain accounts for such usage. Such accounts shall be filed in court regularly on an affidavit of one of the directors of defendant No. 3 once in every six months.”

BBCL, in the contempt plea, alleged that ARG while using the tagline ‘NATION WANTS TO KNOW’ as a trademark, was not maintaining and filing the accounts of such usage as directed by the high court.

Advocates Hemant Singh and Mamta Rani Jha, on behalf of BCCL, argued that the defendants were using the tagline ‘THE NATION WANTS TO KNOW’ to associate it with Arnab Goswami, thereby using it as a trademark.

Opposing the contempt plea, Senior Advocate Malvika Trivedi along with Advocates Rahul Tyagi and Divya Dutta, on behalf of the defendants, argued that the order dated October 23, 2020, had recorded that they were permitted to use the tagline ‘NATION WANTS TO KNOW’ as part of speech/presentation of news etc.

The senior counsel submitted that similar screenshots as relied upon by the plaintiff (BCCL) in their contempt application were placed before the court earlier at the time of hearing the injunction application also. “However, the court had taken a view that whether or not the said tagline is a trade mark can only be determined after leading detailed evidence”, she submitted.

The senior counsel further submitted that there is “no wilful disobedience” of the order of October 2020, and that there was “no occasion” to filed the affidavit as contemplated in the order since the tagline was only being used as part of the presentation of news and not as a trademark in relation to goods/ services.

Taking note of the submissions, the single-judge bench observed that for an act to be a ‘contempt’, three ingredients must be fulfilled: (i) there should be some direction from the court, (ii) there should be disobedience towards that direction and (iii) the disobedience should be wilful in nature.

“However, in the instant case, the first requirement itself is not being met since the Court allowed the Defendants to use the tagline for “speech/presentation of any news channel, etc.; here emphasis was placed by the Court on the term “etc.” to interpret that the list of instances allowed are not exhaustive in nature”, the judge said.

The court further said that while hearing an application under Order 39 Rule 2A it cannot determine whether usage of the tagline is a trade mark infringement or not and only has to examine whether there has been any violation of the order.

Conclusively, the court held that there is "no case of contempt" since the defendants had, prima facie, used the tagline in permissible limits as mentioned in the order dated October 23, 2020.

In view of the observations made by the court, the BCCL requested to withdraw its application and subsequently, the court disposed of the contempt application.

Case Title: Bennet Coleman & Co. Ltd. v. ARG Outier Media Pvt. Ltd. & Ors.