However, Britannia has said that the NutriChoice Digestive Hi Fibre biscuit will be unaffected by the court order. The court observed that since Britannia was the leader in the category with 66% market share, it has the ability to swing ITC’s customers away due to the “deceptive packaging'”. The high court has also pointed out in Para 42 of its observation on the case that Britannia’s variant on its own admission is not suitable for children.
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“The court’s order came on a plea filed by ITC Ltd seeking to restrain Britannia from violating its rights in packaging/trade dress of Sunfeast Farmlite Digestive All Good biscuits by allegedly using a deceptively and confusingly similar trade dress for Nutri Choice Digestive Zero biscuits”. It told the court that yellow was the dominant colour that it had been using for packaging variants of its digestive biscuits and could not consider changing that.
Britannia launched the packaging in question in June 2016, only months after ITC introduced their product with similar packaging, according to Business Standard.
Packaging of both the biscuits is a combination of yellow and blue with claims of “No Sugar, No Maida”, making them deceptively similar, found the court.
ITC in its petition sought damages for infringement of trademark and goodwill, and to withdraw the Britannia product in the current packaging.
In the Rs 26,000 crore organised biscuit market, the digestives segment is estimated at around Rs 500 crore.
The Mint in its report stated that Britannia, which has been selling the digestive biscuits in a blue and yellow package, had agreed to stop using the blue colour of its packaging. However, its scrip on Tuesday closed at Rs 262.35, down 0.04% on Bombay Stock Exchange from the previous close.
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