Mumbai: In a partial relief to the owner of Amul, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF), the Bombay High Court has allowed it to air its advertisements after deleting the content for which Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) had raised objection. However, the court has rejected Amul’s contention that the advertisements were not depicting frozen desserts in a disparaging manner.
GCMFL had approached the court to challenge the earlier single bench order which had ruled it guilty of disparaging the rival product, i.e. frozen desserts. The case was filed by the country’s largest consumer goods company Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), which owns Kwality Wall’s brand and is the market leader in the frozen dessert category.
“The appellant (GCMMF) would be free to use the said TVCs (television commercials) after deleting the portion, which has been found to be disparaging the product frozen desert,” said the division bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice Riyaz I. Chagla.
The division bench had passed an order on December 13; however, it was uploaded on the Bombay High Court website on December 26.
The court has allowed GCMMF to air those commercials after exclusion of objectionable portions, including Vanaspati flowing in a cup with a frozen desert written on it and other related portions.
The genesis of the dispute lies in the ad campaign launched by GCMMF for its Amul brand of ice-cream in March 2017 that emphasized the difference between ice-creams (made from milk fat) and frozen desserts (made from vegetable oil). These definitions based on ingredients are as per the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India norms.
Amul’s ads urged customers to choose ice-creams over frozen desserts, claiming that the latter was made with Vanaspati or vegetable oil. Soon after the ad, HUL filed a lawsuit in the Bombay High Court asking that Amul be stopped from airing the ads and seeking damages.
HUL argued that as Kwality Wall’s was the largest frozen dessert brand in India, it was directly hit by Amul’s ads even though the films did not refer to it by name.
In June 2017, a single-judge bench comprising Justice S.J. Kathawalla had granted HUL’s plea for an injunction against the advertisements that Amul began airing in March. Later, Amul had challenged the order in the division bench.
The division bench took a view that the single bench order was a blanket injunction which could not have been granted and held that the TV commercials in their entirety could not be said to be of objectionable nature. Thus, the division bench held that GCMMF was free to use the first seven out of a total of ten snapshots in each of the two TV commercials.
When contacted, Vishal Maheshwari, co-founder of V.M. Legal Advocates, who is representing Amul in the case, confirmed the development but refused to divulge any details citing confidentiality. HUL declined to comment on the developments.