HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court has ruled that PepsiCo owns the sole rights to the Mountain Dew trademark.
In an 18-year-old dispute, Pepsi sued Magfast Beverages of Hyderabad for selling bottled water under the label Mountain Dew. The trial court ruled that PepsiCo’s rights to the trademark Mountain Dew were not exclusive and that Hyderabad-based Magfast Beverages also had the right to use it.
The trial court reasoned that whereas Pepsi used the Mountain Dew trademark for soft drinks, Magfast used it for bottled water, and the two categories were different.
Senior counsel K Vivek Reddy argued on behalf of PepsiCo that it had exclusive rights to the name Mountain Dew because the trademark was filed in 1985. He claimed that despite knowing PepsiCo held exclusive rights, Magfast Beverages had dishonestly imitated the Mountain Dew brand when selling bottled water.
In response, Magfast Beverages claimed that it was not aware of PepsiCo’s trademark and that it independently developed the Mountain Dew brand for the sale of bottled water in the year 2000, well before PepsiCo launched Mountain Dew in India. PepsiCo was given exclusive rights to Mountain Dew by the High Court Bench made up of Justices P Naveen Rao and G Radha Rani since the company had a registration that had been in effect since 1985.
The court ruled that even if bottled water and soft drinks are separate products sold across the same counter, buyers are likely to mistake them for products supplied by Pepsi if they bear the same trademark. The court ruled that Magfast Beverages had violated the copyright by replicating the label. The court ordered Magfast Beverages to pay PepsiCo damages and imposed a permanent injunction prohibiting it from violating the company’s trademark.