Sahara moves court against Star over 'One' name

Sahara moves court against Star over 'One' name

Sahara

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Star's plans to launch a new upmarket Hindi channel, Star One, has run into a roadblock. Sahara India Mass Communications has appealed in a Delhi court against Star using the `One' brand name.

Though details of the case are not forthcoming, what is known is that part of the Subrata Roy-promoted Sahara group moved the Delhi high court on Monday contending that Star should be restrained from using the name Star One as it is similar to SaharaOne. Recently Sahara brought all its media and entertainment businesses under the umbrella brand name of SaharaOne.

It has been contended that Sahara had applied for the trade mark SaharaOne some time back and, hence, Star cannot use a similar sounding name, Star One. Sahara is not only using that name for its general entertainment television channel but across its movies, radio and film academy businesses. The logo was unveiled on 1 October at London and came on the entertainment channel on 10 October.

When contacted, a spokesperson for Star India refused to comment on the case as the matter was sub-judice. Star One is slated for launch on 1 November and a media campaign has already been unveiled.

The case has been listed for hearing again day after tomorrow. Former law minister, Arun Jaitley, would argue the case on behalf of Star India.

In the past Delhi high court had heard such cases involving media companies.

In one such case, filed about 18 months back, the court had ordered that Videocon group could not use a name for a proposed channel that got abbreviated to `BBC'.

The British Broadcasting Corporation had appealed against Videocon group's intention to launch a channel by the name of Bharat Business Channel or BBC in short; saying that BBC is a registered trademark.