A trademark dispute has hit the Shree Sardar Patel Sevadal (SSPS), a charitable trust engaged in social service. Named after the Iron Man of India, Sardar Patel, the trust is involved in a dispute over trademark rights with one of its former trustees.
The dispute is over rights to the logo of the ‘Sardar Patel Group (SPG)’, an entity formed by Lalji Patel in 2004. It can be recollected that this group played a major role in the Patidar reservation agitation in 2015. That stir brought Hardik Patel, now a BJP MLA, into political limelight.
A trustee of SSPS, Ashvin Patel, quit the trust in 2020 after fallouts with both Lalji Patel and Hardik Patel. However, he continued social service activities, including organising free blood donation camps, providing legal services to those in need, and security services.
Ashvin Patel continued these services under the name and logo of SPG. SSPS took exception and filed a lawsuit against him in a Mehsana district court alleging infringement of its trademark rights.
SSPS urged the court to stop Ashvin Patel. It said that the trust had used the logo for many years and had earned considerable goodwill among the Patidar community. Ashvin’s use of the SPG logo was unauthorised and was being used for financial gain which was damaging the reputation of both SSPS and SPG, the trust said.
Trademark rights
The trademark registry had accepted the SSPS trust’s application for registration of SPG logo and, as such, it is now the registered trademark of SSPS, the trust added.
Ashvin’s application for registration of trademark ‘SPG’ had been turned down in 2023. In spite of this he continued to use the logo.
Meanwhile, Ashvin said in his defence that the SSPS trust had not taken the permission of the charity commissioner to file a suit against him.
In October 2023, the Mehsana court had ordered him not to use the trademark. Ashvin had challenged this order before the Gujarat High Court but his appeal was dismissed.
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