Digital Footprints, Analog Goodwill: Tech Square Revives Panhard Levassor in India

In May 2026, a Division Bench of the High Court of Delhi in India passed a judgment that would intrigue legal practitioners focusing on territoriality-based trademark regimes. In Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha v. Tech Square Engineering, the Court cancelled the Indian registration of the ALPHARD mark, registered by a local registrant in 2015, on the ground that Toyota had established a spillover reputation in India long prior to the local registrant’s registration.

The judgment becomes more striking in light of the fact that Toyota had neither formally launched the ALPHARD nor advertised the vehicle in India, and held no prior registration in the Indian territory. For Toyota to have established reputational spillover in India, the Court heavily relied on unsolicited importation of its vehicles by consumers in India. In doing so, the Division Bench gave new doctrinal life to an obscure 1901 English authority and paved the way for foreign brand owners to establish transborder reputations without even penetrating Indian commercial markets.

The Statutory and Doctrinal Setting

The Indian Supreme Court, in M/S Prius Auto Industries Ltd., brought about a paradigm shift in the passing-off regime in Indian jurisprudence by applying the principle of territoriality. The Court held that for a claimant to prove reputational spillover, it must establish the existence of its presence through its mark in India. To this end, Section 11(6) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 directs the Registrar to the knowledge or recognition of the mark within “the relevant section of the public”, rather than the public at large (in line with WIPO Recommendations and the Paris Convention).

The Customer as Witness: The Bench’s Evidentiary Reasoning

Tech Square was pursued as a Section 57 application. While distinguishing Prius on facts, the Division Bench overruled the decision of the Single Judge, which had earlier refused to grant relief to Toyota. The Single Judge, relying on Prius, held that the evidence relied upon by Toyota, comprising international brochures, global sales figures, and import-export data effected by private parties rather than by Toyota itself, did not establish goodwill within India.

The Division Bench, however, accepted Toyota’s evidence comprising listings for second-hand ALPHARD vehicles on Indian automotive resale sites dating to 2007 and 2008, discussion threads on the Indian enthusiast forum Team-BHP, classified advertisements in the Times of India, and import shipment data from zauba.com. The Bench treated the grey-market imports as solid evidence reflecting organic, self-driven behavior among the relevant section of the public, not stimulated by any advertisements.

The 1901 Antecedent: Customers Who Import

The analytical derivation of this reasoning is older than it appears, and can be traced back to 1901. In Panhard Levassor Motor Co. (1901), the Chancery Division held that the English customers who had imported Panhard vehicles privately constituted an English customer base, i.e., a relevant section of the public, sufficient to invoke actionable goodwill. In modern English law, Hotel Cipriani SRL (2010) is the most recent application of Panhard, where the Court of Appeal accepted the goodwill of an Italian hotel in England as constituted by an English customer base built upon by personal travel to Venice.

The Division Bench’s Tech Square judgment is a direct modern application of Panhard Levassor's core insight across common-law jurisdictions.

Thus, unsolicited importation by domestic consumers, in itself, can evidence that a foreign mark has commercial presence within the jurisdiction. The question of whether a mark commands recognition is best answered by observing the behavior of Indian consumers, and not only what the proprietor has done in India.

The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the authors, and do not reflect the views of any institution or organisation with which the authors are professionally affiliated.