Bombay High Court has ruled the brand commercial of smartphone giant Vivo Mobile featuring Bollywood star Aamir Khan similar to the contents of a proposal sent by famous ad-firm Ogilvy & Mather for that very product.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7CrDTyiBR4
In an order passed earlier this week, Justice BP Colabawalla directed the smartphone giant Vivo Mobiles India Pvt Ltd to either deposit Rs. 1 crore tor furnish a bank guarantee from a “reputed bank” within a week if it wants to continue airing the advertisement.
The advertisement titled as “Light Up the Night” is for Vivo’s V17 Pro mobile handset.
The court, while making prima facie observations against the advertisement, refused to stop it from being aired simply keeping in mind the “balance of convenience” which means Vivo India had spent considerable amount of money in creating the advertisement and then buy commercial sports for airing it and the passage of time since the advertisement was being aired.
Though Vivo disputed it, the amount of Rs. 1 crore was based on O&M’s lawyer’s submission that they would have earned Rs.1.50 crore had Vivo given them the contract for the advertisement. The amount involved in just the making of the advertisement Is claimed to be Rs.50 crore.
Apart from Vivo, O&M’s petition also included Dentsu Impact Pvt Ltd as a respondent- the ad firm which claimed to have created the commercial independently and refused to have had anything to do with the latter’s idea proposed to Vivo.
https://twitter.com/DentsuImpact/status/1185899737498578945
As per the petition, Vivo had approached one of the O&M’s firms in October 2018 to itch ideas to advertise the product in response to which the company claims to have shared a detailed storyboard later that year for which was based on the same theme of the amusement park as what can be seen in the ad. However, Vivo informed O&M in May this year that they were not going with them for the ad, after which the company claimed to have informed the smartphone giant that all the intellectual property rights in the proposal belonged to O&M.
But In June Vivo approached them yet again after which a detailed script of the idea was forwarded to concerned people from the company and later in September, O&M noticed the brand commercial and approached the HC for the same.
The court in the proceeding observed that were quite a few similarities between the advertisement and the proposal sent by O&M to the company which included the theme, the main characters, the entrance, the product highlight shot, and other moments of the characters in the commercial.
