Calcutta High Court rejects Emami’s disparagement claim against Dabur’s ‘Cool King’ ad

A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday dismissed Emami Limited’s appeal which claimed that Dabur India’s advertisement for its talcum powder Cool King — featuring Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor — disparaged Emami’s products, Dermi Cool and Navratna..A Bench of Justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Uday Kumar upheld a modified injunction passed by a single judge, holding that the ad in which Kapoor refers to a rival product as “Sadharan” (ordinary) does not denigrate Emami’s products or bear sufficient resemblance to them so as to mislead consumers.“The freedom of commercial speech of the respondent and its fundamental right to do business cannot be throttled on a vague perception of disparagement,” the Court said while dismissing the appeal as being overly sensitive and speculative..The dispute originated from a television commercial aired by Dabur, which featured a white bottle with a green cap allegedly resembling Emami’s registered design for Dermi Cool. The ad showed a character rejecting the bottle labeled “Sadharan” (ordinary) and opting for Dabur’s Cool King. Emami filed a suit in July 2024 seeking an injunction, claiming the ad disparaged its leading talcum powder brands by implicitly suggesting their inferiority.An ad-interim injunction was granted on July 11, 2024 by which the Court restrained Dabur from airing the commercial using bottles resembling Emami’s products. Dabur later modified the advertisement by replacing the contested bottle with a generic white cylindrical container with a black cap, prompting the single-judge to modify the injunction in January 2025 and allowing the revised ad to air..In the appeal before the Division Bench, Emami, represented by Senior Advocate Debnath Ghosh, argued that the use of the word “Sadharan” in the ad—even with the new bottle design—still conveyed a disparaging message to consumers and undermined its brand reputation. It also claimed that the bottle continued to evoke the image of its products and that the public would associate the term “ordinary” with Dermi Cool.However, Dabur, represented by Senior Advocate Sudipto Sarkar, countered that Emami had no design registration for the complete Dermi Cool bottle but only for the cap of one variant and had misrepresented its intellectual property claims. The firm also highlighted that the modified ad’s bottle bore no visual resemblance to any of Emami’s containers and was a computer-generated, unlabeled white cylindrical bottle with a black cap..Dabur further argued that its commercial simply made a permissible comparison between its own product and “ordinary” talcum powders.It stressed that the ad did not use Emami’s product names or depict bottles that were deceptively similar.The respondent also pointed out that Emami’s own advertising campaigns had previously contrasted its “Navratna Maxx Cool Talc” against “ordinary” powders, using language like “normal talc” and “khushboo wale powder,” thereby making similar comparisons..The Division Bench found that Emami’s claims were exaggerated and unsupported by the facts. It held that:The modified bottle shown in Dabur’s ad was “entirely different” from Emami’s Dermi Cool packaging;The term “Sadharan” was used in a generic, non-derogatory sense and did not amount to denigration;There was no “double recall” by consumers linking the earlier version of the ad to Emami’s products after six months of non-broadcast.“Unless one is an avid follower of advertisements, having nothing better to do, it is improbable that a common target consumer of normal prudence would have such double recall,” the Court noted..On the issue of the Court “pre-approving” advertisements, the Bench clarified that judicial scrutiny of modified ads was permissible in such cases to assess whether they fell foul of existing injunctions..In 2023, Dabur and Emami were engaged in a litigation over Dabur's "Cool King Thanda Tel' hair oil in packaging which was alleged to be deceptively similar to Emami’s Navratna .Ghosh was briefed to appear for Emami by advocates Shuvasish Sengupta, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Mini Agarwal and Ratnadipa Sarkar..Sarkar was briefed to appear for Dabur by advocates Sourajit Dasgupta, R. Jawaharlal, Meghna Kumar and Sudhakar Prasad.[Read Judgment]