Greetings from LUCKNOW Society!
This is to highlight and apprise that LUCKNOW Society has filed a passing off suit in the Court of District Judge, Lucknow against Lucknow Expressions Society represented through its Secretary, Mrs. Kanak Rekha Chauhan alleging the deceptive use of similar mark /name with the intention to mislead and gain publicity through an event that sounds similar to that of our initiative LUCKNOW LITERARY FESTIVAL that eventually is causing confusion and disrepute to our initiative.
We at LUCKNOW Society have been organizing the Lucknow Literary Festival for past 5 years now. The first ever Lucknow Literary Festival took place in February 2013 with a handful of youngsters as a team to organize the same. It was in the very first season of the Lucknow Lit Fest that Mrs. Kanak Rekha Chauhan was a part of the guest management team, but as the festival started to earn name and fame so did she started to spread that the initiative was her brain child. The news came to us as a shock through a news report published in Amar Ujala and upon being confronted in front of the whole team over a Facebook group, she only left the group immediately without even turning to answer anyone.
The incidence resulted in the emergence of Lucknow Expression Society and their initiative Lucknow Literature Carnival, which took place in December 2013 for the first time as a replica of Lucknow Literary Festival, following the footsteps of LUCKNOW Society. Not only the event was copied but even the themes and memento presented to the delegates was a replica of ours, which continues till date. People who claim to be the owner of brainchild failed to deliver even the design of memento and other creatives.
Things did not just stopped there, and the Lucknow Literature Carnival itself was rechristened as Lucknow Literature Festival a few months back over various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Complaints were made to Facebook, Twitter & Instagram and prompt action has been taken by all the entities against Lucknow Expressions Society by removing the pages of Lucknow Literature Festival, not just once but multiple times. i.e.
http://facebook.com/LucknowLitFest
http://instagram.com/LucknowLitFest
http://instagram.com/LucknowLiteratureFestival
http://twitter.com/LitFestLucknow
It was in the year 2014 that Lucknow Literary Festival, subsidiary of LUCKNOW Society was ranked among top 6 Lit Fests in India by Outlook Traveller, but unable to bear the success achieved by the original Lit Fest, they even came up with a fake news portal named, "Heraldpost.in" which ranked the Lucknow Literature Festival among the top 5 Lit Fests in India. Unable to understand the irony of the situation, how could a Lit Fest that never happened could be ranked in top 5, we tried investigating further on the situation, which only resulted in a domain name booked in desperation to be among top Lit Fests, which was booked using fake details by one of the arduous team member.
As a matter of fact LUCKNOW Society has already applied for the trademark for Lucknow Literary Festival (TM Application 2483090, Class: 41, Dated: 22/02/2013) and Lucknow Literature Festival (TM Application 3275891, Class: 41, Dated: 03/06/2016), but enduring their unprincipled acts, they once again followed the footsteps and applied for a trademark with similar name and class.
In this regard, LUCKNW Society tried to get in touch with Mr. Jayant Krishna, President Lucknow Expression Society via an email but the query was never addressed either by him or his Society. The only known reaction was a pressure tactic and muscle show through a caveat from Lucknow Expression Society that prompted us to choose the legal way and to file a case against them.
However we would still like to make it clear, we had no intention to trouble our learned fraternity, the audience/supporters and delegates, but are left with no option other than making people aware of the facts. Each one of us have our own sensibility and are free to support and encourage to one we feel are following the right path but we humbly anticipate that learned fraternity would discourage the copycats.
At the same time, it becomes our duty to announce that any individual and/or entity association or financial transaction with Lucknow Expressions Society or any of its ventures does not constitute any legal or moral liability towards us. We understand that Public & Private sectors entities, commercial houses and individuals have a great willingness to contribute towards such events but is imperative on our part to aware the most respected and genuine sponsors/contributors to ensure that their prestige and goodwill is not compromised.
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