1. BY: S.PARVADAVARDINI TRADEMARK DEPARTMENT ALTACIT GLOBAL

2. Comparative advertising is advertising where one party advertises his goods or services by comparing them with the goods or services of another party. Such other party is usually his competitor or the market leader of that good or service . Comparative advertising is a widely used form of commercial advertising in many countries.

13. HLL advertised its toothpaste ‘New Pepsodent’ as “102% better than the leading toothpaste”. In the television advertisement, samples of saliva are taken from two boys. While the sample was being taken from the boys, they were asked the name of the toothpaste with which they had brushed in the morning. One boy said Pepsodent, the response of the second boy was muted, however, lip movement of the boy would indicate that he was saying “Colgate”. Also, when the muting was done, there was a sound of the jingle used in the Colgate advertisement. It was decided that, the word toothpaste had become synonymous with Colgate over the years and a reference to “leading brand” was to Colgate. Thus it became a case of Comparative Advertisement which led to the disparagement of Colgate’s products

15. In late 2008, the makers of Horlicks, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GSK), and the makers of Complan, Heinz India (Heinz), came out with advertisements that directly compared the brands using the competitor brand's trademarks. Industry observers felt that in their bid to outdo each other, the two companies had ended up denigrating the competitor brand. Usually issues related to disparaging ads by rival companies were resolved by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). But with constant mudslinging at each other, the two companies decided to solve the issue in courts. In September 2008, Heinz moved the Bombay High Court objecting to the Horlicks ad , while in December 2008, GSK approached the Delhi High Court against the Complan advertisement. The decision is still pending.

16. HUL's new Rin campaign claims in an advertisement that Rin provides more brightness in comparison to Tide Naturals, which is the new product that Procter & Gamble has launched a couple of months ago in the mass segment positioning it against Rin as well as Wheel. Procter & Gamble subsequently challenged Tide's claim in the Chennai High Court On March 1, the court asked HUL to modify the advertisement since they were not really able to substantiate the claim. A written judgment is still awaited on this matter.