New Delhi: In Oreo Vs Fabio case, A single judge bench of the Delhi High Court on Friday put restrictions on Parle Products Pvt. Ltd. to sell its vanilla cream-filled biscuit. The suit was filed by Intercontinental Great Brands – Proprietor of Oreo brand – alleged that Parle’s Fab!o infringed its trademark.
What’s the case?
Oreo is a popular brand even in India which produces a type of sandwich consisting of two biscuits or cookie pieces with vanilla cream-filled in middle. It’s very popular among children for its unqiue appearance and taste. Oreo brand is owned by Mondelez International, which is only proprietary in India as well.
Parle Products ltd. started producing a new kind of biscuits with the brand ‘Fab!o’ which seems resemblance and association with Oreo. Fab!o is sandwich kind of biscuit consisting of two round shape pieces of biscuit with a sweet cream-filling.
The plaintiff argued that FAB!O mark is being used for vanilla cream-filled chocolate sandwich biscuits which were appeared similar to Oreo. The Court argued that FABIO is similar to FABIO as ‘I’ is in disguise of exclamation mark.
The bone of contention is the way Parle has tried to sell its Fab!o in its advertisement as declared to pronounce as Fa-bee-yo. The Single judge bench acknowledged it to be pronounced like Oreo. He observed the end of syllables are the same of both brand, “ee-yo” and concludes “names undoubtedly rhyme”.
