Delhi High Court Vacates RewireX Injunction Against Nugenesys, Finds Celagenex Wilfully Suppressed Facts

The Delhi High Court on 20 August allowed an appeal by Nugenesys Pharmaceuticals and vacated an ex-parte ad-interim injunction restraining it from selling nutraceutical products under the mark “RewireX”.

A Division Bench of Justices V. Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora held that Celagenex Research (India) had obtained the order by wilfully suppressing material facts and imposed costs of Rs. 2 lakh on it. The judges held:

“The conduct of the Respondent in wilfully suppressing the Notice dated 29.10.2025 and the Objections dated 27.01.2026, in the plaint, stands established beyond any doubt.”

Celagenex manufactures the nutraceutical “NUREWIRE”, a registered trademark in Class 5. Shoyeb Abdul Gafoor Mandlekar, a co-founder of Celagenex who held 99% of its founding shareholding, resigned in October 2024. Weeks later, Nugenesys Pharmaceuticals was incorporated.

Nugenesys applied to register the mark “RewireX” in March 2025 and launched products under the mark in March 2026. Celagenex subsequently sued, claiming that it had learnt of the launch only in May 2026. A Single Judge granted an ex-parte ad-interim injunction on 20 May 2026.

Nugenesys appealed, contending that Celagenex had known about the trademark application since October 2025.

The Bench found that Celagenex's cease-and-desist notice dated 29 October 2025 established that it had been aware of the adoption of the mark at least since October 2025. This contradicted its pleaded case that it had learnt of the mark only in the first week of May 2026. It held that Celagenex ought to have disclosed the notice and the trademark opposition it filed in January 2026 as material facts in its plaint and rejected Celagenex's explanation that their omission was a mere “oversight”.

Although the documents formed part of the record, the Court noted that Celagenex had “tucked away” the notice under an obscure heading in the document index. It held:

“The tucked away Notice... under a bunch of documents at serial no. 2 of the index, with an obscure description, do not satisfy the test of making a disclosure as mandated by the Statement of Truth.”

Further, the Bench held that the suppression had directly influenced the grant of the ex-parte injunction, as the Single Judge was “unaware of the issuance of the Notice... and Objections”. It also noted what it described as a “persistent pattern of suppression and non-disclosure” by the filing counsel representing Celagenex across at least three separate suits. It referred to two earlier matters in which Single Judges had similarly recorded findings of concealment.

Invoking the line “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action”, the Bench observed:

“A repeated event is no longer random, but is a deliberate act. In this case, the proceedings of the three suits show a consistent pattern/trend followed by the filing counsel, by design, with an intent of interfering with the judicial process.”

It held that condoning the wilful suppression would cause greater harm to the judicial process than any harm caused by the continued sale of the products. “If the Respondent's wilful misconduct is condoned, the harm caused to the judicial process will be far more than that caused by the sale of the Appellants' products,” it observed.

It also held that Celagenex, having signed the Statement of Truth accompanying the plaint, was “as much responsible for this suppression as is the filing counsel”. It held that Celagenex could not retain the benefit of an ex-parte injunction obtained through suppression and that the interim injunction application was liable to be dismissed on that ground alone.

Accordingly, the High Court vacated the injunction granted on 20 May 2026, dismissed the interim injunction application, directed the release of products seized from Nugenesys from superdari, and imposed costs of Rs. 2 lakh on Celagenex, payable to the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee within two weeks.