{"id":3428,"date":"2025-11-14T16:43:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T11:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/?p=3428"},"modified":"2025-11-14T16:43:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T11:13:48","slug":"supreme-court-transfers-eureka-forbes-patent-infringement-suit-to-bombay-high-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/supreme-court-transfers-eureka-forbes-patent-infringement-suit-to-bombay-high-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Transfers Eureka Forbes\u2019 Patent Infringement Suit to Bombay High Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atomberg Technologies Private Ltd. v. Eureka Forbes Ltd. & Anr. <\/strong><\/h1>\n

Transfer Petition (Civil) Nos. 1983 and 2174 of 2025<\/h1>\n

[PAMIDIGHANTAM SRI NARASIMHA and ATUL S. CHANDURKAR, JJ]<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court of India, in its judgment, was faced with two rival transfer petitions resulting from cross-suits between two prominent manufacturers of home appliances. The petitioner, Atomberg Technologies Pvt. Ltd., had requested transfer of a suit for patent infringement instituted by Eureka Forbes Ltd. before the Delhi High Court to the Bombay High Court, where Atomberg’s own suit for groundless threats of infringement was pending. On the other hand, Eureka Forbes moved a counter-petition asking for a transfer of Atomberg’s Bombay suit to Delhi. The issue arose as a result of Atomberg introducing a new water purifier, “Atomberg Intellon,” on June 20, 2025. Atomberg asserted that Eureka Forbes, a rival manufacturer, made oral statements to its distributors and retailers stating that Atomberg’s product violated Eureka Forbes’ patents and would take legal action. These purported threats, as per Atomberg, interfered with its business operations and led it to file a suit for baseless threats under Section 106 of the Patents Act, 1970, before the Bombay High Court on July 1, 2025.<\/p>\n

Eureka Forbes, however, argued that Atomberg’s product utilized patented technologies of Eureka Forbes, such as customizable taste and TDS adjustment features. It further claimed that Atomberg’s manufacturer, Ronch Polymers Pvt. Ltd., being Atomberg’s contract manufacturer in the past, had access to its confidential product data. Once Eureka Forbes bought Atomberg’s product offline and imported it into Delhi, they did a technical comparison and asserted that they had established patent infringement. Consequently, it filed a suit for patent infringement in the Delhi High Court on July 7, 2025. This led to each side initiating rival suits: Atomberg’s groundless threat suit in Bombay and Eureka Forbes’ infringement suit in Delhi, resulting in the current transfer petitions in the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Atomberg contended that its suit in the Bombay High Court was instituted earliest and that both of these companies had their registered offices in Mumbai, which came within the territorial jurisdiction of the Bombay High Court and thus was the most convenient forum. It contended that Eureka Forbes was engaging in forum shopping by invoking Delhi\u2019s jurisdiction merely based on an online purchase and delivery of the product, which was an insufficient ground to establish jurisdiction. Atomberg further submitted that both suits involved overlapping issues of law and fact concerning the same patents and products. It highlighted that experimentation with the suits before various courts would pose the risk of conflicting decisions, redundancy of proceedings, and wastage of judicial time. On these premises, Atomberg requested the transfer of the Delhi suit to the Bombay High Court so that both cases might be tried together.<\/p>\n

Eureka Forbes resisted the transfer and contended that the Delhi suit was the substantive one because it directly addressed the issue of patent infringement, whereas the Bombay suit was merely procedural insofar as it was restricted to obtaining relief for threats. It is argued that the cause of action for infringement had accrued within Delhi, where the product was bought and dispatched, and this gave territorial jurisdiction under Section 104 of the Patents Act as well as Section 20 of the Code of Civil Procedure. It also asserted that it had not done forum shopping and that Atomberg’s entry into the Delhi proceedings proved its acceptance of the forum. With the technicality of the issues of infringement, it was argued by Eureka Forbes that the Delhi High Court was a more appropriate forum to hear the case.<\/p>\n

In its consideration, the Supreme Court also observed that its jurisdiction under Section 25 of the CPC was only to determine whether the ends of justice were met and need not consider which suit had a wider scope. The Court looked into the character of actions under Section 106 of the Patents Act, 1970, that grant a standalone cause of action for relief from groundless threats of infringement of a patent. In light of the evolutionary process of the legislation, the Court found that the original provision under Section 36 of the Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911, included a proviso excluding such actions if an action for infringement was already filed. But this caveat was dropped in the 1970 Act, clearly stating that actions for groundless threats and actions for infringement may stand side by side.<\/p>\n

Upon scrutiny of the pleadings and documents, the Supreme Court held that Atomberg’s Bombay suit preceded the Delhi infringement suit. It also noted that the jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court was invoked only based on an online purchase, whereas the two companies were located in Mumbai. The Court ruled that the disputes in both suits over the same patents, products, and parties were substantially overlapping.<\/p>\n

Given these considerations, the Supreme Court granted Atomberg’s Transfer Petition and ordered that the Delhi suit, Eureka Forbes Ltd. v. Atomberg Technologies Pvt. Ltd. & Anr., be transferred to the Bombay High Court. The Court also directed it to be tried together with Atomberg’s Bombay suit and expedited disposal of the injunction applications in the consolidated case. Accordingly, the transfer petition filed by Eureka Forbes was rejected, and all pending applications were ordered to be disposed of.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atomberg Technologies Private Ltd. v. Eureka Forbes Ltd. & Anr. Transfer Petition (Civil) Nos. 1983 and 2174 of 2025 [PAMIDIGHANTAM SRI NARASIMHA and ATUL S. CHANDURKAR, JJ] The Supreme Court of India, in its judgment, was faced with two rival transfer petitions resulting from cross-suits between two prominent manufacturers of home appliances. The petitioner, Atomberg […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judgement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3428"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3432,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions\/3432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}