One River, Two Crocodiles: Territoriality, Coexistence, And The Idea - Expression Divide In Lacoste Vs. Crocodile International Private Ltd.
Govarthini A S, School of Excellence in Law, The Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University
I. INTRODUCTION
The battle between two clothing companies that have created a worldwide identity around a single reptile is one of the few trademark cases in the world that has lasted as long or traversed as many territories. On one side stands Lacoste, the French sportswear label founded by tennis champion Rene Lacoste, whose right-facing crocodile has adorned polo shirts since the late 1920s. On the other stands Crocodile International, a Singapore-founded textile enterprise that has used a left-facing crocodile device, together with the word “Crocodile” rendered in its founder’s own handwriting, since the late 1940s. The two marks, mirror images of one another, have collided in courtrooms across Asia for over two decades.
In India, the dispute reached its first definitive resolution on 14 August 2024, when a Single Judge of the Delhi High Court delivered a judgment in a suit that had been instituted as far back as 2001. That judgment was in turn, tested on cross-appeals before a Division Bench, which delivered its own ruling on 9 March 2026. Read together, the two decisions offer a rare, layered study of Indian trademark and copyright law: the meaning of “deceptive similarity,” the demanding trinity test for passing off, the territorial limits of private coexistence agreements, and the contested boundary between an unprotectable idea and a protectable expression under the doctrine of merger. This comment traces the dispute from its historical origins through both tiers of Indian adjudication, and closes with a brief comparative look at how the same rivalry has fared abroad.
