Britannia Industries Ltd on Wednesday said the Delhi High Court did not issue any stay order, as of now, on ITC Ltd’s suit, alleging that they had copied the colour combination of ITC’s digestive biscuit packs for its recently launched product.
“The matter came up for hearing before Delhi High Court on August 22, 2016 and August 24, 2016. The next date of hearing is August 31, 2016. No injunction (stay) has been granted as of now,” the biscuit maker said in a filing to BSE.
According to the filing, “ITC has filed a suit against Britannia Industries Limited at Delhi High Court alleging that Britannia is copying the colour combination of ITC’s ‘Sun Feast Farmlite Digestive-All Good’ biscuits packs for its ‘Nutri Choice Digestive Zero’ biscuit packs”.
Britannia did not make any further comment on this matter as the matter is before a court.
ITC’s contention was that the Britannia product, which was launched last week, has similar use of yellow and blue colour on the package and used similar texts in the packaging to describe the product attributes.
While ITC’s digestive biscuit packaging says in bold ‘No added sugar, maida’ and that it contains ‘fibre’, Britannia’s product too says ‘0 per cent added sugar, maida’ and contains ‘high fibre’. ITC launched its digestive biscuit in May. Both products have similar prices.
ITC, which had overtaken Britannia in the cream biscuit segment, has been promoting its digestive biscuit through advertisements and in retail trade on the pitch, calling it the first digestive biscuit without any added sugar and maida.
In the Rs 26,000 crore biscuit market, the digestives segment is estimated at around Rs 500 crore.
(with inputs from Indiaretailing Bureau)
Must Read