The former franchisees of Sangeetha Caterers and Consultants LLP, now running their restaurants across Chennai city under the brand name of Geetham, told the Madras High Court on Thursday that they were willing to change the colour of their logo and issue advertisements in newspapers stating that they have nothing to do with Sangeetha.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, senior counsel P.S. Raman, representing the former franchisees, said, the franchisee agreement was cancelled on May 31, 2022 and therefore from June 1, 2022 his clients had begun to run their restaurants under the name ‘Geetham’.
“The only issue is that they issued advertisements stating that the name has changed but everything else including taste and ambience remains the same. The colours in the logo are also similar to Sangeetha but now we are willing to change the colour to something entirely different and also make it clear that we have nothing to do with Sangeetha,” he told the Bench.
Mr. Raman told the Bench that though the former franchisees had been running the restaurants named Geetham since June 1, 2022, a single judge of the High Court had, on September 22, 2023, issued an interim injunction restraining the former franchisees from continuing to run the restaurants under the “deceptively similar” name of Geetham.
Stating that the employment of hundreds of staff would be at stake if the restaurants were not allowed to run, he said, the Geetham unit located right opposite the main entrance to Chennai airport in Meenambakkam alone, was spread over 16,000 square feet. He said, the appellants had restaurants in Velachery, OMR, Medavakkam and T. Nagar.
After hearing his preliminary submissions, the judges decided to hear the appeals at length on October 12. Since senior counsel A.K. Sriram was already representing Sangeetha before the Bench, they said the appellants could be rest assured that no contempt of court proceedings would be initiated against them till then.
