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Fakes give Tata House the jitters

Reeba Zachariah in Mumbai

The Tata brand is going places. And in newer product forms. But not always by its own doing.

Scout around and you will find Tata Steel cutlery, Tata water tanks, Tata pressure cookers, Tata burners, and even a Tata India, a recruitment agency!

But, hang on. If you still think these are from India's oldest conglomerate, the Rs 45,000 crore (Rs 450 billion) House of Tatas, you are mistaken.

There are enough fly-by-night operators cashing in the Tata brand equity.

Says F N Subedar, senior vice president- finance and company secretary at Tata Sons, "The Tata brand represents a high degree of quality and trust. To have this brand equity eroded by people trying to supply spurious and sub-standard goods under the Tata brand name is a travesty."

"We even found a non-resident Indian selling Tata basmati rice in the US," says Subedar.

"At the Tata group level, we have taken a stand to spare no effort or cost to identify and stamp out such fraudulent ventures which mislead customers to buy such products expecting the Tata assurance of quality and value for their money," he added.

Tata Sons recently filed a civil suit against National Marketing Company, who were marketing steel cutlery products fraudulently using the Tata brand.

The Delhi high court granted an ad-interim injunction and appointed local commissioners authorised to raid the premises of the defendants and seize the goods.

The commissioner had seized about 3,000 boxes worth Rs 800,000 of the cutlery from Delhi.

Tata name has also been used in burners, educational books, pressure cookers, plywood, wine shops, fake recruitment agency, lottery schemes among others.

"The Tata name is been highly misused in the consumer goods category and it leads to a dilution of the brand image," Subedar said.

Unlike in the West, where the world famous trade marks prevails in trademark laws, this law is yet to be notified in India.

The world famous trade marks are primarily established names and these names cannot be used in other categories by third parties, even if the company is not present.

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