High Court refuses to gag media in Coronil trademark case

During the arguments before Justice CV Karthikeyan on Friday on the plea moved by Patanjali Ayurved seeking to vacate an ex-parte interim injunction granted by the court on July 17, advocate P Giridharan made a request that media should not report on the case until it concluded.

He claimed that a lot of adverse reporting was under way and Patanajali’s pleadings even without him handing it over have appeared in the media leading to a media trial. To this, Justice Karthikeyan pointed out that he logged in like anybody else and added that he was not controlling the list of participants.

“If you have a grievance, ask the Registry to control the participants,” the judge said. But the advocate noted that he was only averse to reportage and not the participation of media, following which Justice Karthikeyan assured him that the court would not be affected by media reports. He added in a lighter vein that trial by media was part of the game.

Appearing for Arudra Engineers Private Limited from Tiruvanmiyur which had obtained the interim injunction until July 30, senior counsel PR Raman submitted that there was no conspiracy involved as made out by Patanjali. It was a clear-cut case of trademark violation, advocate Raman added.

Arudra has been carrying this business for 20 years and has garnered significant reputation on its trademark products, Coronil -213 SPL and Coronil-92B that used to clean industrial machinery. But a complete bogus claim has been made by Patanajali regarding its Coronil Kit.

Citing various newspaper reports, he said the initial claims of it being a medicine for COVID cure and then being marketed as an immunity booster after the intervention of Union Ministry for AYUSH clearly revealed that they have marketed the Coronil Kit exploiting the insecurities of the people, he said. This, he claimed, caused irreparable damage to the reputation of the engineering company’s trademark. The case has been posted for further hearing to Monday.