- Court holds Ideal Jawa abandoned trademark through non-use and non-renewal
- Ruling clears path for Classic Legends to invest in Yezdi’s long-term future in India
Yezdi has got its legal heartbeat back. The Karnataka High Court’s Division Bench has ruled that the rights to the Yezdi trademark sit with Boman Irani and Classic Legends, not with the long-defunct Ideal Jawa and its liquidator. The court has said that you cannot keep a brand locked away in memory and then claim it decades later. If you do not use a trademark, do not renew it and do not even list it as an asset when selling off a company, you lose it. That is exactly what the judges found in Ideal Jawa’s case, and on that basis they set aside the 2022 Single Judge order which had treated Yezdi as still belonging to the old company.
Ideal Jawa stopped making motorcycles in 1996 and went into liquidation in 2001. The Yezdi registrations then lapsed between 2007 and 2008 and were removed from the Trade Marks Register. No one from the company or the Official Liquidator renewed the registrations, challenged their removal or tried to stop others from grabbing the mark for over 15 years. The court has treated this long silence as abandonment. In contrast, Irani applied for new Yezdi registrations from 2013 onwards, obtained them lawfully, and actively defended the mark against third parties, including a case in the Delhi High Court.
The Official Liquidator had argued that because Ideal Jawa still owed money to creditors, the brand should be treated as a valuable leftover that can now be sold to raise funds. The Bench disagreed. It noted that trademarks are intangible rights tied to use and renewal, not bricks and machines that sit in a yard waiting to be auctioned. Once the business stops, registrations lapse, the mark is not even mentioned in asset valuation or sale notices and no one bothers to protect it, the goodwill attached to that mark dies out. At that point any later attempt by the liquidator to link unpaid dues with “brand value” is legally weak.
Irani’s family had a long personal link with the Yezdi name, tracing back to its Persian roots and earlier use in family businesses. After the motorcycle company shut down, he kept Yezdi visible through the yezdi.com domain, then moved to secure fresh registrations in his own name once the old marks fell into the public domain. Later, he partnered with Mahindra and Anupam Thareja to form Classic Legends in 2015, with the express aim of bringing Yezdi back to Indian roads. The Division Bench has treated these steps as active stewardship, the opposite of abandonment, and has therefore held that his registrations under the Trade Marks Act are valid.
It gives Classic Legends clear title over Yezdi, removing the legal cloud that had been hanging over its current range and future products. Dealers, suppliers and finance partners now have a firmer legal base for long-term contracts and investment. It also sends a message to other companies eyeing dormant Indian names: you cannot simply rely on nostalgia or old balance sheets. If you want a heritage badge on a new fuel tank or battery pack, you must either keep the mark alive through real use or acquire it through proper registrations when it is genuinely free. That level of certainty is useful for an industry where several legacy labels from the two-stroke era are being talked about for revival.
Irani has called it a moment that goes beyond a personal win, saying it validates years spent trying to revive Yezdi in a lawful, modern way. Anand Mahindra has framed it as a precedent that should discourage opportunistic claims over abandoned marks and reward those who actually invest in keeping old brands relevant. Co-founder Anupam Thareja has stressed that Classic Legends will now push ahead with its plan to make Yezdi meaningful for a new generation of Indian riders as a living motorcycle brand.
