Beyond The Label: FSSAI And Brand-Identity Deception

Beyond the Label: FSSAI and Brand-Identity Deception

Introduction

Intellectual property (“IP”) law and food safety law have traditionally been treated as separate domains, administered by different authorities, under different statutes, and animated by different objects. IP law governs a proprietor’s exclusive rights over a mark and the consequences of its unauthorized use;¹ food safety law governs the safety, labelling and honest presentation of food to the public.² The usual assumption is that the two occupy separate compartments. A dispute over a brand belongs before the civil courts under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, while questions of food safety belong to the regulator. That division, however, overlooks an area where the two regimes genuinely meet, because both are concerned at bottom with consumer confusion. When a mark is used to create a false impression about what a consumer is receiving, whether as to the nature of the product or the identity of its source, the same act