Tag: #GujaratHighCourt

Aadrikaa Legal Services (ALS)- Law I Litigation I Arbitration

Date: 18.09.2026

Gujarat HC Quashes Copyright FIR Over Alleged Counterfeit Apple Accessories; Says Trademark Dispute Cannot Be Camouflaged as Copyright Offence to Bypass Statutory Safeguards

In an important ruling concerning the overlap between copyright and trademark enforcement in counterfeit-goods cases, the Gujarat High Court has quashed an FIR registered against a shopkeeper following the seizure of alleged counterfeit Apple-branded electronic accessories worth approximately ₹15.11 lakh.

Justice P. M. Raval held that commercial hardware such as AirPods, cables, power adapters and smartwatches does not, merely by being counterfeit or bearing a registered brand, constitute a literary or artistic work for the purpose of attracting criminal liability under Section 63 of the Copyright Act.

The Court further held that the authorities could not subsequently sustain the case under the Trade Marks Act because the raid itself had been conducted without complying with the mandatory safeguards under Section 115(4)—including obtaining the prior opinion of the Registrar of Trade Marks and having the search and seizure conducted by an officer of the statutorily prescribed rank.

FIR Registered Under Copyright Act Following Raid on Ahmedabad Shop

• The petitioner, Jitendrabhai Mohanbhai Kriplani, approached the High Court under Section 482 CrPC seeking quashing of FIR C.R. No. 11191026220492 of 2022, registered on October 19, 2022 at Kalupur Police Station, Ahmedabad City.
• The FIR invoked Sections 51, 63 and 64 of the Copyright Act, 1957.
• The complainant was a manager of Griffin Intellectual Property Service Pvt. Ltd., which, according to the FIR, had been authorised by Apple Inc. to take legal action against persons allegedly infringing Apple’s rights or selling counterfeit iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, mobile phones and accessories.
• Acting on information concerning alleged counterfeit Apple products being sold in shops in the Kalupur area, the complainant approached the police. A raid was subsequently conducted at “Raj Cover House”, where the petitioner was present.

₹15.11 Lakh Worth of Alleged Counterfeit Apple Products Seized

• According to the FIR, the authorities recovered several categories of allegedly counterfeit Apple-branded products, including AirPods, USB cables, power adapters, a smartwatch and different kinds of Apple-branded stickers and barcode/MRP labels.
• The FIR placed the aggregate value of the seized items at ₹15,11,193.
• The key question before the High Court was whether allegations concerning the possession or sale of such duplicate commercial products could legally sustain criminal proceedings for copyright infringement.

Petitioner: Counterfeit Hardware Is Not a Copyrightable “Work”

• The petitioner argued that the seized goods did not fall within the categories of works protected under Section 13 of the Copyright Act.
• His case was that AirPods, cables, adapters, smartwatches and similar electronic products were commercial articles rather than literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works.
• Accordingly, the ingredients necessary for invoking Sections 63 and 64 of the Copyright Act were absent.
• The petitioner further argued that if the allegation was actually one of misuse of Apple’s trademark on counterfeit goods, the case would fall under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, rather than being converted into a copyright prosecution.

Gujarat HC: Commercial Hardware Is Not Literary or Artistic Work

• The High Court accepted the central distinction advanced by the petitioner.
• It held that copyright protection under Section 13 read with Section 2(c) is confined to protected categories of works, whereas hardware components, cables, power adapters and electronic devices are commercial industrial products.
• The Court observed that misuse of a brand name or manufacture of duplicate hardware bearing a trademark would ordinarily constitute trademark falsification punishable under Sections 103 and 104 of the Trade Marks Act, rather than an offence under the Copyright Act.
• It consequently held that mere possession or sale of counterfeit commercial goods or accessories bearing brand labels does not, by itself, satisfy the requirements of Sections 13 and 63 of the Copyright Act.

FIR Failed to Identify Any Specific Copyrighted Literary or Artistic Work

• The Court then examined whether the stickers, seals, packaging labels and other material allegedly recovered could independently support the copyright prosecution.
• It noted that the FIR merely described the seized articles as goods infringing Apple’s copyright and bearing Apple’s trademark.
• Crucially, however, the FIR did not identify any specific copyrighted literary work—such as an instruction sheet or user manual—or any specific artistic work such as an original graphical layout or packaging design whose copyright had allegedly been infringed.
• The Court stressed that copyright is a statutory right, and an FIR invoking Section 63 must set out how the material allegedly infringed satisfies the statutory definition of a protected work under Sections 2 and 13.

No User Manuals or Instruction Manuals Were Actually Seized

• The complainant argued that product literature, packaging, labels and instruction manuals constituted original literary or artistic works belonging to Apple.
• The High Court, however, examined the investigation papers and found that no instruction manual or user leaflet had actually been recovered or seized from the petitioner’s shop.
• The Court said a new factual foundation could not be introduced during oral arguments when it was absent from the police recovery memo.
• The recovery panchnama was also silent regarding any user or instruction manual. Photographs produced later through an affidavit-in-reply, which were not part of the investigation papers, could not be relied upon to cure that deficiency.

MRP Tags and Barcodes Are Functional Data, Not Automatically Literary Works

• The Court also addressed the argument that stickers, MRP labels and barcodes constituted literary works.
• It held that an inclusive definition of “literary work” cannot be stretched so far as to convert every commercial label or container into a literary work.
• An MRP price tag, standard barcode or technical model sticker contains essentially functional and factual information, the Court observed, and cannot automatically be treated as an original literary work of authorship.
• This distinction was central to the Court’s conclusion that the alleged counterfeit hardware and functional labels could not sustain the criminal copyright case as framed in the FIR.

“Cannot Camouflage a Trademark Dispute as a Copyright Offence”

• One of the most significant observations in the judgment concerns attempts to invoke copyright law where the substance of the allegation is trademark counterfeiting.
• The Court found that the primary allegation was the sale of counterfeit Apple hardware and accessories, a subject that fell within Sections 103 and 104 of the Trade Marks Act.
• It held that the complainant could not camouflage a trademark dispute as a copyright offence in a manner that bypassed the procedural safeguards prescribed for trademark searches and seizures under Section 115 of the Trade Marks Act.

Could the Case Continue Under the Trade Marks Act?

• Having found Section 63 of the Copyright Act unsustainable, the High Court considered the respondents’ alternative submission.
• The complainant and State argued that even if the Copyright Act provisions were incorrectly invoked, the allegations nevertheless disclosed offences under Sections 103 and 104 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999.
• In other words, it was argued that incorrect labelling of the statutory provision in the FIR should not prevent the investigation from proceeding under the appropriate law.
• The High Court rejected this argument because the Trade Marks Act contains its own mandatory safeguards governing search and seizure.

Prior Opinion of Registrar Under Section 115(4) Is a Statutory Condition Precedent

• Section 115(4) of the Trade Marks Act requires the police officer, before conducting search and seizure, to obtain the opinion of the Registrar on the facts involved in the offence relating to the trademark and abide by that opinion.
• The High Court found from the FIR and police record that no prior written opinion had been sought or obtained from the Registrar of Trade Marks before the raid on Raj Cover House.
• Justice Raval described this requirement as a “statutory condition precedent” rather than a technical formality.
• The Court viewed the safeguard as designed to prevent arbitrary police raids on commercial establishments at the instance of private corporate entities.
• The Court consequently held that a search and seizure conducted in total defiance of Section 115(4) was vitiated.

Raid Conducted by Officers Below Statutorily Required Rank

• There was another fundamental procedural defect.
• The Court noted that Section 115(4) provides that no police officer below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police or equivalent shall search and seize without warrant in such cases.
• Although the initial application had been forwarded by the DCP Zone-03 to Kalupur Police Station, the actual raid, search and seizure were carried out under a Police Inspector along with head constables and police constables.
• The High Court found these officers to be below the statutorily prescribed rank of DSP/ACP and consequently held that they lacked the requisite authority to conduct the search and seizure under the Trade Marks Act.

Court Finds “Colourable Exercise of Power”

• The High Court went further and described the record as demonstrating a “clear pattern of colourable exercise of power.”
• According to the Court, the complainant-company was aware that proceeding under the Trade Marks Act required the Registrar’s prior opinion and execution of the raid by an appropriately ranked police officer.
• The Court found that what was essentially a trademark dispute had instead been presented as copyright infringement, thereby enabling an immediate raid through local police officers without satisfying those statutory safeguards.
• The Court held that permitting the prosecution subsequently to fall back upon trademark charges would effectively sanction an evasion of the statutory mandate.
• It reiterated that the FIR and seizure memo did not disclose recovery of original literary works or user manuals and that the controversy essentially concerned alleged falsification of a registered trademark on commercial accessories.

Complainant’s Authority to Lodge FIR Was Upheld

• Importantly, the High Court did not accept every contention raised by the petitioner.
• The petitioner had challenged the complainant’s locus and authority to institute the proceedings.
• On examining the authorisation documents, however, the Court found that authority had been given to the agency and, in turn, to its authorised person to lodge the FIR.
• The petitioner’s objection regarding the complainant’s lack of locus was therefore rejected.
• Thus, the FIR was not quashed because the complainant lacked authority. It was quashed because the Copyright Act provisions were found inapplicable to the allegations as framed and the statutory requirements necessary for a Trade Marks Act prosecution had not been followed.

Gujarat HC Quashes FIR and All Consequential Proceedings

• Summarising its conclusions, the Gujarat High Court held that the allegations did not satisfy the statutory ingredients of Sections 13 and 63 of the Copyright Act, since the commercial hardware in question did not constitute literary or artistic works for the purposes of the prosecution as framed.
• It further held that Sections 103 and 104 of the Trade Marks Act could not simply be substituted to save the proceedings because the search, raid and seizure had been conducted in breach of Section 115(4)—both because the Registrar’s prior opinion had not been obtained and because the operation was carried out by officers below the prescribed rank.
• Continuation of the proceedings, the Court concluded, would amount to an abuse of the process of Court and cause grave miscarriage of justice.
• Accordingly, the High Court allowed Jitendrabhai Kriplani’s petition and quashed FIR C.R. No. 11191026220492 of 2022 dated October 19, 2022 and all consequential proceedings insofar as the petitioner was concerned.

Why This Judgment Matters

• The ruling draws an important boundary between copyright enforcement and trademark counterfeiting.
• The judgment does not hold that counterfeit branded electronic goods are lawful. Rather, it holds that allegations of counterfeiting must be prosecuted under the correct statutory framework, and the procedural safeguards attached to that legislation cannot be avoided by characterising a trademark dispute as copyright infringement.
• The decision is especially significant for intellectual-property enforcement agencies, brand-protection companies, police authorities, retailers and businesses because it stresses that the choice of statute directly affects the legality of search, seizure and prosecution.
• Where the substance of an allegation concerns falsification of trademarks on commercial products, authorities cannot use the Copyright Act merely to circumvent the safeguards specifically prescribed by Section 115(4) of the Trade Marks Act.

Key Takeaway

Counterfeit commercial hardware bearing a registered brand does not automatically constitute copyright infringement. Where the allegations essentially concern trademark falsification, the Trade Marks Act must be followed—including its mandatory search-and-seizure safeguards. A trademark dispute cannot be dressed up as a copyright case merely to bypass those statutory requirements.

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Source: Gujarat High Court

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Ravi Shekhar Jha – Advocate, Bar Council of Delhi