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   It’s Biyani vs Ambani over Bazar trademark

India’s big guns are having a bazaar battle. Kishore
Biyani, one of the biggest names in domestic retail, has locked horns
with one of India’s richest men, Anil Ambani, over a small name with
big stakes: Big Bazar.
Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group
has filed to register Reliance Big Bazar with India’s trademark
authority. The application says it claims “no right” to “exclusive use
of word ‘Big Bazar’”, which means the company will only use the name as
Reliance Big Bazar, according to the document filed.
Meanwhile,
Biyani’s flagship hypermarkets are called Big Bazaar, with a double
“a”, spelling it the way Oxford English Dictionary spells the word to
define a market.
Still, Biyani says he considers the younger
Ambani’s move as an attempt to misappropriate a brand he has nurtured
for years into one of India’s best known retail names.
There
are 89 Big Bazaars in India and the format is the highest revenue and
profit generating unit for the Future Group that Biyani founded. Biyani
has plans to hive off Big Bazaar and may eventually take it public
after doubling the number of stores by March 2009. 
“They
are using a name which was created by us,” says Biyani, managing
director of Pantaloon Retail. Therefore, “we are opposing” it. 
The
Anil Ambani-led wing of the former Reliance group, on the other hand,
uses ‘Big’ as the moniker for its entertainment and media channels
ranging from Big FM, India’s largest radio network, to Big Video, Big
Music, Big Flicks under Reliance Big Entertainment Pvt Ltd.
Big
Bazar is “one of the many names under consideration by Reliance Big
Entertainment for aggregated retailing of our entertainment products
and services under one umbrella brand” says a spokesperson for Reliance.

In addition to taking on Biyani, if Reliance Adag enters India’s
$300 billion annual retail market, it could open up another turf
battle, this time with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. That is
because a retail entry by Anil Ambani could potentially run afoul of a
2006 agreement between the two estranged brothers that set aside
business segments in which the two will not compete with one another. That
agreement, never made public in terms of its details, was used to
divide the Reliance empire that the brothers inherited after their
father Dhirubhai Ambani’s death.
It is unclear if the
agreement applies to any businesses that either brother gets into after
their split. But, since the division, Mukesh Ambani has already lined
up India’s most ambitious—$6 billion—retail venture that is opening
hundreds of convenience stores and hypermarket nationwide in the next
three years. With at least 544 stores, Reliance Retail, ironically,
competes with Biyani’s Big Bazaar.
Reliance Adag applied in
November 2006 for trademark registration of the name under two separate
categories of trademark registration: class 28 that covers trademark in
games and playthings, gymnastics and sporting articles and class 35
that deals in advertising, business management, business administration
and office functions. 
The registrations, carried under the
company’s unit Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Ventures Pvt. Ltd, was made public
by the country’s controller general of patents, designs and trademark
in November, allowing for any opposition to file their objections. 
Companies
opposing trademark applications are supposed to mark their objections
in three to four months’ time from the date it was madepublic. 
“We have filed oppositions for both (the cases),” Biyani said.
Local
and foreign retailers from McDonald’s Corp. to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
have been involved in alleged trademarks infringement cases in India as
local individualsand firms have trademarked names such as 7 Eleven and
Burger King. 
However, it is unusual for two Indian corporate giants to get into a fight over such major brand name.