Battle of the book publishers

BOOKED: Delhi HC had ordered Prentice Hall of India Pvt Ltd to drop 'Prentice Hall' from its name.

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New Delhi: It's a copyright war! An Indian publisher has sought legal help against a US-based publishing company. The issue - the Indian firm was using the same name as the US company.

The Delhi High Court had earlier ordered Prentice Hall of India Pvt Ltd (PHI) to drop Prentice Hall from its name. However, PHI filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking to quash the High Court order.

The Supreme Court has acted on the petition and has issued a notice to US-based Pearson Education Inc.

The High Court had ordered that the Chairman of PHI, Ashoke K Ghosh to either drop the words Prentice Hall from its name and let Pearson transfer its shareholding without any consideration or sell its shares to the US firm for Rs 20 crore.

According to a report in PTI, the High Court had also held Ghosh guilty of oppression and mismanagement under Section 397-398 of the Companies Act.

PHI had entered into an agreement with US-based Prentice Hall Inc in 1963 for publishing books. However, Prentice Hall Inc was taken over by Pearson in 1998 and the company tried to restrain PHI from using the name Prentice Hall any further.

PHI counsels K K Venugopal and Atul Sharma told PTI that the name 'Prentice Hall' had acquired tremendous goodwill in India and had become PHI's property by virtue of its use for the last 43 years and this must be protected by the court.

Moreover, Pearson was neither a shareholder as per its register of members nor it had applied for transfer of shares in its name, the counsels argued.

In its petition, PHI said the company would suffer severe loss if it was directed to drop the established name.

The Indian publisher also said Pearson was not entitled to file petitions as it had not shown any interests in the affairs of PHI for several years. Besides, the US company had alleged oppression and mismanagement only after PHI protested starting of a competing business by Pearson, it added.