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IP Case Digest · Indian Penal Code s.420

Section 420, Indian Penal Code: case law

3 judgments of the Karnataka High Court and the Delhi High Court applying Indian Penal Code s.420, from 2024–2026, each with a headnote by BRB Legal.

3judgments
2courts
2024–2026years

Sri Ganapathy Manickam v. State Of Karnataka & Ors., CRIMINAL PETITION NO. 16837 OF 2025

Karnataka High Court · Set aside

Criminal proceedings quashed, the Court extending to a co-accused the benefit of an earlier order in the same crime which had held that a pure commercial transaction or breach of agreement between parties was being given the colour of crime. Allowing the prosecution to continue would be an abuse of the process of law and would result in a miscarriage of justice. Observations were confined to the quashing petition and do not bind other proceedings between the same parties.

Sri Manjunatha M.S. v. State by Arisikere Town Police & Anr. (Criminal Petition No. 1620 of 2017)

Karnataka High Court · Dismissed

Petition under section 482 CrPC to quash the prosecution dismissed. The proviso to section 115(4) of the Trade Marks Act, requiring a police officer to obtain the Registrar's opinion before search and seizure, is not mandatory; non-compliance is an irregularity which does not vitiate the investigation unless the accused establishes at trial that it occasioned a failure of justice. Where the complaint was registered under section 63 of the Copyright Act and the Trade Marks Act offences came to light only once the seizure was under way, the officer was under no obligation to obtain the opinion at that stage, since the articles could not reach the Registrar without first being seized. Whether the Copyright Act complaint was a device to bypass the proviso is itself a question for trial, on which the complaint could then be dismissed.

Mohd Shakir v. Gopal Traders & Anr.

Delhi High Court · Rectification allowed

Rectification petition under section 50 of the Copyright Act dismissed. A petitioner who clears the person aggrieved threshold must still prove that the entry was wrongly made. The petitioner sought to do so by relying on a Lebanese third party's trade mark registrations in Australia and elsewhere to show that the respondent's artistic work was not original, but that third party was never made a party. Foreign trade mark registrations are not incontrovertible evidence of authorship of an artistic work, and rectifying the register on them would rest on extraneous and unverified evidence. The Berne Convention does not assist, since it is for the alleged author to assert its own rights. Section 48 makes the register only prima facie evidence, leaving any true author free to claim. The petitioner was also approbating and reprobating, having itself claimed in its own opposition to be the originator of the same artistic work.

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