A trademark infringement case handled by Shine Legal Associates, Lahore — a leading trademark infringement lawyer in Pakistan — covering unauthorized brand use, passing off, and copyright infringement in fashion retail.

Practice Area	Trademark Law, Copyright Infringement, Passing Off
Industry	Fashion Retail & E-Commerce
Jurisdiction	Pakistan — Intellectual Property Tribunal, Lahore
Duration	14 months (filing to final order)
Outcome	Injunction granted, damages awarded, infringing goods seized
Firm	Shine Legal Associates — shinelegalassociates.com

Our client — a mid-sized women’s clothing brand based in Lahore — had spent nearly a decade building a reputation in Pakistan’s competitive fashion market. The brand held a registered trademark covering its distinctive name and logo, and by the time they came to us, it was generating a solid customer base both through physical retail outlets and an increasingly active online presence.

In early 2022, one of the founder’s acquaintances flagged something troubling. A seller operating out of Faisalabad had started using an almost identical brand name — same spelling, slightly altered logo — across multiple online platforms including Facebook shops, a standalone website, and local wholesale markets. The products sold under this near-identical name were of noticeably inferior quality and aggressively priced to undercut the original brand.

The timing made it worse. The client had just launched a premium line targeting the urban middle-class segment. Customer reviews on social media started mixing — people complaining about poor stitching and late deliveries were unknowingly reviewing the imposter brand, not our client. The reputational damage was real and accelerating.

Trademark cases in Pakistan sit at an awkward intersection of the Trade Marks Ordinance 2001 and the Copyright Ordinance 1962, and enforcement — particularly against online infringers — remains patchy. The challenges here were layered:

• The infringing party had never formally registered the copied name, which sounds advantageous but actually complicates certain procedural steps
• The seller was operating partly through informal channels and gray-market wholesale networks, making asset tracing difficult
• Digital evidence — screenshots, archived pages, customer complaint threads — needed to be preserved quickly before the infringing party could scrub their online footprint
• Our client needed relief fast, not after a multi-year civil trial

The copyright angle added another dimension. The original brand’s logo had been designed by a local graphic designer under a contract that — like many such arrangements in Pakistan — was silent on IP assignment. We had to establish copyright ownership before we could rely on it.

The first two weeks were spent building an airtight evidence file. We commissioned a private market survey across three cities, documenting consumer confusion firsthand. Investigators visited wholesale markets in person and purchased goods under the infringing name. A digital forensics process ran simultaneously to archive the infringing party’s online presence — every product listing, every page, every customer interaction thread.

We also compiled the original brand’s trademark registration certificates, usage history going back to 2013, and advertising expenditure records. In passing-off claims, the burden of proving goodwill and reputation falls on the claimant — and courts want to see paper, not just assertions.

The designer who created the original logo was located and a formal IP assignment deed was executed, with his written acknowledgment that the design had been created as a work-for-hire. This was not merely a technicality — copyright in the logo opened a separate cause of action and allowed us to pursue criminal remedies alongside civil ones.

We filed on two simultaneous tracks:

• A civil suit before the Intellectual Property Tribunal in Lahore, seeking a permanent injunction, delivery up of infringing goods, damages, and legal costs
• A criminal complaint under Section 478 and related provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code, as well as the Trade Marks Ordinance, which allowed us to approach local authorities for raid action on the infringing warehouse

The criminal complaint, while it ultimately settled without conviction, served a critical strategic purpose: it triggered a police-supervised raid within six weeks of filing, during which approximately 4,200 units of infringing goods were seized. That seizure, photographed and documented under official supervision, became the single most powerful piece of evidence in the civil case.

We moved simultaneously for an interim injunction before the IP Tribunal. This required satisfying the three-part test: prima facie case, balance of convenience, and irreparable harm. Given the documented consumer confusion, the ongoing reputational damage, and the seized goods demonstrating active infringement, the interim injunction was granted within eight weeks — effectively stopping the infringing seller from operating under the copied name pending final determination.

Several arguments proved decisive over the course of the proceedings:

• Likelihood of confusion: We demonstrated through survey evidence that a meaningful percentage of consumers in the relevant market associated the infringing name with our client’s brand — a direct application of the deceptive similarity test under Section 10 of the Trade Marks Ordinance 2001.
• Passing off: Even in the absence of registration by the defendant, the tort of passing off provided independent relief. We established goodwill, misrepresentation, and resulting damage — the classic Trinity House test applied by Pakistani courts following the English common law tradition.
• Copyright infringement: The logo reproduction, while altered, retained enough substantial similarity to constitute copyright infringement. Expert evidence from a graphic design professional was adduced to demonstrate the extent of copying.
• Damage to reputation through quality dilution: This was perhaps the most commercially significant argument. We quantified, through customer complaint data and sales records, how the inferior infringing goods were causing measurable reputational harm — not just lost sales, but active brand erosion.

After fourteen months of proceedings, the IP Tribunal delivered a final order in our client’s favour. The key reliefs granted were:

• A permanent injunction restraining the defendant from using the infringing name or any deceptively similar mark
• An order for the destruction of all seized infringing goods — approximately 4,200 units
• Compensatory damages quantified at PKR 3.2 million, based on the Tribunal’s assessment of lost sales and reputational harm
• Legal costs awarded to our client

The criminal complaint was compounded following payment of a separate settlement sum negotiated outside court, which the defendant agreed to as part of a broader resolution.

Within three months of the interim injunction, the infringing seller’s online presence had effectively collapsed. Our client’s premium line launch, delayed by over a year, finally proceeded without the reputational overhang.

A few things stand out from this matter if you own a brand in Pakistan:

• Trademark registration is a non-negotiable foundation. It does not automatically stop infringement, but it determines which legal tools are available and how quickly you can move. Unregistered marks require proving goodwill before you can reach the merits — that adds cost and time. Learn more about registration at Trademark registration.
• Trademark registration is a non-negotiable foundation. It determines which legal tools are available and how quickly you can move. Learn more at the Intellectual Property Organization of Pakistan (IPO-Pakistan).
• Speed matters enormously in infringement cases. Every week that passes while an infringer operates allows more confusion to accumulate, more reputational damage to occur, and more evidence to potentially disappear. Acting quickly — even with imperfect evidence — is almost always better than waiting for a perfect case.
• Consumer survey evidence is underused in Pakistani IP litigation. Courts are receptive to it, and it transforms abstract legal arguments about ‘likely confusion’ into concrete documented reality.

Shine Legal Associates is a law firm based in Lahore, Pakistan, with a focused practice in intellectual property law, corporate law, and commercial litigation. We advise businesses ranging from early-stage startups to established mid-market companies on trademark registration, copyright protection, IP enforcement, and brand strategy.

If you are dealing with trademark infringement, brand copying, or any intellectual property dispute, we are available for an initial consultation. Our approach is direct, strategic, and built around results rather than prolonged proceedings.

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© Shine Legal Associates | www.shinelegalassociates.com | All rights reserved. Client details anonymised for confidentiality.

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