Lifebuoy and Dettol fought each other in two High Courts over COVID germ-kill ads

When COVID-19 turned hand hygiene into a land-grab, India's two germ-kill giants went straight at each other. On or about March 12, 2020, Dettol aired an ad for its Liquid Hand Wash: a mother tells a doctor her son keeps falling sick, and the doctor points to a red soap — matched to Lifebuoy's colour, shape and configuration — saying it should be kept away from the child, because hands need to be cleaned with Dettol, which gives '10x better protection' than the red soap shown as ordinary.

HUL sued Reckitt Benckiser in the Bombay High Court for disparagement and trademark and copyright infringement, seeking Rs 1 crore in exemplary damages and a permanent injunction, and calling RB a 'habitual offender' who had denigrated Lifebuoy before. On April 17, 2020, Justice K.R. Shriram recorded RB's statement that the ad would be suspended for the time being and adjourned the matter to April 20.

The same month a second front opened in the Delhi High Court, where RB won interim relief against HUL: Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw restrained HUL from airing Lifebuoy ads that dissuaded people from using Dettol antiseptic liquid — unfairly comparing a drug to a cosmetic — saying the ad carried a 'hint of malice'. The court noted the disputed Lifebuoy ad had not aired since December 2018, but HUL refused to promise not to re-air it, and that a Calcutta High Court restraint on disparaging Dettol antiseptic liquid already applied nationwide.

Dettol's handwash ad suspended; HUL restrained by the Delhi HC over a 'hint of malice'; HUL sued for Rs 1 crore; both COVID campaigns went through court

Panic-driven demand made fear the cheapest switching tool: each brand attacked the rival's product instead of proving its own, and both had done it before.

Dettol's script made the denigration deniable — a fictional doctor and a red prop — but the styling matched Lifebuoy so exactly that the court read malice into it.

HUL's refusal to give an undertaking on an ad it had not aired since 2018 signalled it planned to re-run the attack when COVID demand arrived.

India's disparagement doctrine allows interim restraint on ads that denigrate a rival, so a single settled impression could freeze a national campaign mid-pandemic.

Comparative advertising that needs a lookalike prop to make its point is disparagement awaiting an injunction. In a public-health panic, attacking a rival's hygiene claim invites courts in.

Dettol's handwash ad stayed suspended while the Bombay HC suit proceeded, and the Delhi HC listed RB's main plea for June 16, 2020. Both brands' pandemic sales boomed anyway, but the legal analyst Yashvardhan Rana, writing in The Wire Science, argued the case showed why Indian law needed stricter rules against unproven claims — because 'distasteful claims' by advertisers in a pandemic could jeopardise public health while the country scrambled for a cure.