Sunfeast Yipee v/s Maggi Rivalry over single word "Magic Masala" ! When Sunfeast Yipee took Maggi to Court

The story of Sunfeast Yipee and Maggi Rivalry over the word "Magic Masala"

The Rivalry started back in 2010, ITC enetered the instant noodle market with its brand Sunfeast Yipee.

It started with two flavours i.e., "Magic Masala" and "Classic Masala".

These two flavours started gaining a lot of popularity and within 3 years time Sunfeast Yipee had captured 12.5% market share in the instant noodles market.

Seeing the success of its competitor, Nestle Maggi has launched a new similar Sounding variant of Maggi as "Maggi Magical Masala" in 2013. 

ITC  Sunfeast Yipee being unhappy with it, filed a complaint against Nestle over the copy of "Magical Masala" in the Madras High Court to restrain it from using the words "Magical Masala".

ITC Claimed that while Nestle Maggi was a Market leader, it was threatened by ITC Sunfeast Yipee brand quickly taking up the market shares. It accused Nestle of using a same sounding product to confuse the customer over the Magical Masala.

The Court battle continued and in 2015, the Madras High Court passed an interim order restraining Nestle from using the word "Magical Masala" in its products till the dismiss of these case. 

However, the Madras High Court issued the final order in June 2020. And the was passed in the Favour of Nestle Maggi. The Madras High Court ruled that the words "Magic" and "Masala" are common in English and Indian Words and are not subjected to monopoly ownership on them over those words Copywrites.

The Madras High Court also observed that it was common to use these words in the packaged food industry and in fact the expression "Magical Masala" was first adopted by Lays for its Potato chips.

Atlast, Maggi won the battle and that is how the seven year long dispute came to an end.