No Separate Disclosure Standard For IP Disputes Under Commercial Courts Act: Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court has partly rejected a trademark owner's attempt to introduce additional documents nearly six years after filing suit, holding that intellectual property disputes are not entitled to any special procedural indulgence under the Commercial Courts Act.

In a judgment pronounced on February 20, 2026, Justice Arif S. Doctor said the disclosure requirements under amended Order XI of the Civil Procedure Code are “mandatory and must be strictly enforced” in commercial suits.

Order XI Rule 1(5) bars a litgant from relying on documents that were in its possession at the time of filing the suit unless it can show “reasonable cause” for not disclosing them earlier.

FinTree Education Pvt. Ltd., which registered the mark “FINTREE” in 2012, filed a commercial intellectual property suit in 2019 alleging that Fintree Finance Pvt. Ltd. was infringing its mark. After amending its plaint in 2023 to include a passing off claim, the company returned to court with a second application seeking to place additional pleadings and documents on record, including branch photographs, invoices, website screenshots and Chartered Accountant certificates.

It contended that intellectual property disputes deserve a more flexible procedural approach to safeguard statutory and proprietary rights, and that amendments sought before trial should generally be permitted.

Opposing the plea, the defendant questioned “whether the scheme of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, permits a Plaintiff to repeatedly amend pleadings and introduce documents through successive applications, without proceeding with the Suit to trial?”

Justice Doctor rejected the contention that trademark disputes deserve greater procedural latitude. “The statutory framework is therefore self-contained and does not contemplate a separate standard for particular categories of commercial disputes,” the Court held. It further observed, “to permit greater latitude merely because the dispute concerns intellectual property would, in effect, dilute the discipline embedded in the amended Order XI and would undermine the very object of the provision.”

Emphasising the rigor of the disclosure regime, the court reiterated that if documents are not disclosed at the threshold, they can be brought on record later only with leave of the Court and upon establishing “reasonable cause” for earlier non-disclosure. It clarified that “mere oversight, inadvertence, or the Plaint being voluminous does not constitute reasonable cause” and that the scheme of Order XI is “designed to ensure procedural discipline, early crystallisation of disputes, and expeditious disposal of commercial litigation.”

Rejecting the attempt to rely on the exception permitting the production of documents in answer to a defendant's case, the Court held that the provision cannot be used as a “device to introduce documents long within their knowledge and possession.” It described the present attempt as “nothing but an effort to circumvent the mandate of amended Order XI Rule 1(5).”

The court partly allowed the application, permitting documents that came into existence after the institution of the suit, including updated registration status pages and recent Chartered Accountant certificates, while making it clear that their relevance and admissibility would be tested at trial. Amendments confined purely to the pleadings were also allowed, as the suit remains at a pre-trial stage and the changes do not alter its fundamental character.

The interim application was disposed of with no order as to costs.