The Court found that once the HDDs were integrated into electronic equipment and sold with a composite warranty provided by the OEMs, the manufacturers no longer had control over the HDDs.
The plaintiffs did not extend any warranty to the end-users of the electronic equipment, effectively severing their connection with the HDDs at the point of integration into the equipment. The Court observed that the defendants sold the refurbished HDDs through formal, legitimate transactions, which included the issuance of GST invoices.
The plaintiffs were unable to present any evidence proving that these transactions were illegal. Their argument relied solely on the assertion that the payment of GST did not inherently legitimise the transactions. However, the Court determined that this assertion was insufficient to establish any illegitimacy in the sale of the refurbished HDDs by the defendants. Consequently, the Court concluded that there were no grounds to consider the defendants’ sales activities as unlawful, and thus, the sale of refurbished HDDs by the defendants was deemed legitimate.
Source: Barandbench
