Trademarks and wordmarks are part of everyday life in the 21st century. But to a regular person, it's one thing when they're a recognizable brand or model name. If anyone comes up to you and says "Diavel," your first thought will be of the Ducati motorcycle.
But what about the word "freedom?" That's a little more nebulous. Most people think of it as a concept well before they think of it as any type of vehicle name.
But back in July, it's what Bajaj announced as the name of its first-ever compressed natural gas (CNG) motorcycle, when they called it the Freedom 125. What's more, not long after, they made it clear that the Freedom 125 would be just the first in a planned line of CNG motorbikes for the Indian market. To Bajaj, there's more than one way to reduce emissions, and like many other OEMs, it seeks to broaden its approach beyond EVs.
Not so fast, says another Indian company called SG Corporate Mobility. Why? According to a lawsuit it just filed with the Delhi High Court, it owns the "Freedom" trademark, because it's the parent company of motorbike brand LML.
Back in 2002, LML launched a model called the Freedom, and the company even hired massive Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) to star twice over in one particularly memorable ad.
Given the sheer size of Bajaj Auto, it seems reasonable to think that a company like it would have done some amount of due diligence before deciding on a new model name and announcing it to the world.
For its part, SG Corporate Mobility says it plans to revive its own "Freedom" under the LML brand. It's unclear how this will all shake out for Bajaj, but you still can't take away the fact that the company is zigging instead of zagging by going down the CNG route in the first place. That's true no matter what name the model goes under down the line.
