Unsubstantiated Or Bare Denials In Commercial Suits – Whether Sufficient To Frame Issues?

It is fairly common for trials in intellectual property law suits to get prolonged incessantly owing to delaying tactics adopted by one or more parties to such suits. One such practice is that of making unsubstantiated/blanket/bare denials of each and every plea/ document of the adverse party to a suit.

Recently, a single judge bench of the Delhi High Court in the case of Tullio Giusi SPA v. House of Trims Pvt. Ltd. (CS (COMM) 221/2016) came down heavily upon the practice of making bare denials as an attempt to "play a game of litigation in courts, governed by law, by putting on the opposite party, the onus of proving each and every plea, most of which are not really disputed, and in an attempt to take advantage, in my view unfair, of lapse in proving any of the pleas."