Madras High Court: While relying upon the Supreme Court decision in Midas Hygiene Industries (P) Ltd. v. Sudhir Bhatia, (2004) 3 SCC 90, the Single Bench of K. Kalyanasundaram, J. has observed that an injunction would normally follow in the cases of infringement of intellectual property rights, especially when the dishonesty qua the defendants was apparent, and a mere delay would not be a ground to deny an order of interim injunction in such cases.
The plaintiffs submitted that the defendants had deliberately copied their registered bottle design, and thereby had caused design infringement and passed off their bottles as that of the plaintiffs. The defendants contended that there was no novelty in the design of the plaintiffs since the curves on the bottles and the vertical projection on the caps were functional features, and similar designs were in public domain even prior to the plaintiffs’ design registration, hence, the design registration was invalid. The defendants also submitted that they had been selling the alleged infringing products from past five years to the knowledge of the plaintiffs, therefore, as per Section 41(g) of the Specific Relief Act, the plaintiffs had acquiesced their right.
The High Court noted that it was an admitted fact that the plaintiffs’ design was registered in 2008, whereas the defendants launched the impugned design only in 2011. Moreover, it was not the case of the defendants that they were prior user of the design. The defendants had also not produced any material to substantiate their submissions that the designs of the plaintiffs were not new and the similar bottled designs had been used previously. Also, since the defendants themselves claimed to be the registered proprietor of similar designs, hence, they could not be permitted to approbate and reprobate as to the registrability of the bottle design. The Court also noted that the utility of the grip of a bottle, or the feature to facilitate the opening of the cap, could also be attained by other design options, therefore, such features could not be considered as “essentially functional”. The Court, thus, concluded that the design of the plaintiffs had been copied and adopted by the defendants, and the plaintiffs had made out a strong prima facie case for the grant of interim injunction. [Dart Industries Inc v. Cello Plastotech, 2017 SCC OnLine Mad 1851, decided on 12.05.2017]
