Last verified: 17 July 2026<\/p>\n
Passing off vs trademark infringement is the distinction between two ways Indian law protects a brand: trademark infringement is a statutory remedy under Section 29 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 available only for registered marks, while passing off is a common law remedy preserved by Section 27(2) that protects the goodwill of an unregistered mark. Infringement asks whether the two marks are identical or deceptively similar and likely to confuse the public. Passing off asks whether the defendant misrepresented its goods and damaged the plaintiff’s goodwill. Registration decides how easily a right is enforced, not whether the right exists at all.<\/p>\n
This article sets out how passing off vs trademark infringement differ in law, proof, remedies and jurisdiction, the Indian cases that shaped each doctrine, and how to decide which action to file.<\/p>\n\n
Consider a Japanese carmaker world-famous for pioneering a mass-market hybrid. It sued an Indian auto-parts maker for passing off over a shared name, and it lost. The Supreme Court held that despite global fame, the carmaker had not proved goodwill in India before the Indian party adopted the name in 2001, so the passing off claim failed on the territoriality principle. The ruling in Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha v. Prius Auto Industries Ltd., (2018) 2 SCC 1<\/a> captures the registered-versus-goodwill split and the territoriality rule in a single example, and we return to it in detail below.<\/p>\n Maybe your logo was copied and you never registered it. Maybe you’re a lawyer weighing a cause of action, or a founder deciding whether registration is worth the cost. Whatever brought you here, the practical question is the same: which remedy fits your facts? This piece answers that with the exact statutory sections and the leading judgments, not generalities.<\/p>\n\n
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