HUL-Sebamed tussle: SLP against Sebamed dismissed by Supreme Court

HUL-Sebamed tussle: SLP against Sebamed dismissed by Supreme Court

The soap advertising clash between Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) and USV Private Ltd. owned Sebamed reached the Supreme Court after a Special Leave Petition (SLP) was filed by the HUL in the Top Court. The Court however dismissed the SLP.

According to HUL, the advertisements put out by the German brand Sebamed, disparages the former's brand of soaps. It added that Sebamed was ridiculing and belittling its products merely on the basis of their pH value.

HUL filed the SLP against an order passed by the Bombay High Court in January allowing Sebamed to continue its ads. HUL said that the impugned order passed by the division bench is arbitrary and sets the wrong precedence by permitting the respondent to make negative assertions. The Bombay High Court in its last month's order stated that it found nothing disparaging in Sebamed's soap banner which merely reflected that it was better than Dove soap manufactured by HUL. The High Court also allowed Sebamed to continue with its advertisements as long as there was no reference to HUL's detergent RIN in its advertisements.

The petition filed by HUL said that in the advertising campaigns, Sebamed, a cleansing bar is compared with HUL's toilet soaps and bathing bars (as per approved standards). The petition also added that the Division Bench of the High Court has failed to consider that the regulatory framework under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1950 does not prescribe pH as a standard or statutory requirement.

It added that Sebamed was misleading the consumers by making them believe that pH is the most important and only determinant of quality in a soap which is expressly erroneous and then presenting this misleading proposition to denigrate, disparage HUL's products.

According to the petition, Sebamed campaign is detrimental to the consumer interest because it seeks to instil fear in the minds of the consumer that the leading soaps in the market that they have been using for several decades are harmful for the skin.

According to HUL, the Supreme Court has decided not to intervene at this ad-interim stage of the matter, but has asked the parties to have the interim application decided by the Bombay High Court.