The Delhi High Court has dismissed a rectification petition and an accompanying interim injunction application filed by Rexcin Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd., holding that mere use of a word as part of a corporate or trade name does not amount to trademark use. The Court held that a party seeking cancellation of a registered trademark must establish prior and continuous commercial use of the mark as a source identifier.
The dispute arose from Rexcin’s challenge to the registered trademark “REKIN-SP” in Class 5 (pharmaceuticals), owned by Rekin Pharma Pvt. Ltd., which was applied for on May 4, 2017 and registered on September 1, 2020. Rexcin claimed prior use of the mark “REXCIN” since December 16, 2003, and sought cancellation of the impugned mark under Section57 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (the “Act”), alleging deceptive similarity, passing off, and bad faith adoption.
While examining the matter, Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora noted that although Rexcin held registrations for “REXCIN” in Classes 16, 44 and 45 (obtained in 2022), it had no registration and no proven use in Class 5 at the time Rekin adopted and registered its mark. The Court found that Rexcin failed to place any material showing that it sold pharmaceutical products under the trademark “REXCIN”. The invoices and product samples on record only showed Rexcin acting as a white-label manufacturer or marketer for third-party brands such as Sun Pharmaceuticals, with “REXCIN” appearing only incidentally as part of the corporate name in small print.
The Court held that such incidental mention of a corporate name on packaging does not qualify as trademark use under Section 29(6) of the Act. It further clarified that Section 29(5), which deals with infringement by use of a registered mark as a trade name, does not operate in reverse to treat the proprietor’s own trade name as trademark use. On comparison of the rival marks, the Court held that the threshold requirement of deceptive similarity was not met, since Rexcin failed to establish any goodwill, reputation, or consumer-facing use of “REXCIN” as a trademark for pharmaceutical goods. In contrast, Rekin Pharma was found to be the bona fide and prior adopter of the mark “REKIN-SP”, which was prominently used on medicines sold directly to consumers since 2017. The Court also noted the absence of any evidence of actual confusion despite several years of coexistence.
Accordingly, the High Court dismissed the rectification petition seeking removal of “REKIN-SP” from the register and also rejected the application for interim injunction, holding that priority, trademark use, goodwill, and likelihood of confusion were not established by the petitioner.
The connected commercial suit was directed to be listed before the roster bench on February 06, 2026 for further directions.
Appearances:
For the Petitioner – Advocates Sachin Gupta, Rohit Pradhan, Prashansa Singh, Ajay Kumar, and Adarsh Agarwal.
For the Respondents – Advocates Manoj Kumar and Amit Kumar.
