Delhi High Court: Dinesh Kumar Sharma J. granted an ex parte injunction to Voltas Limited restraining a website from using their registered trademark and logo VOLTAS and block and suspend the website.
The present application was filed under Order XXXIX Rule 1 and 2 read with Section 151 Civil Procedure Code ‘CPC’ seeking permanent injunction restraining Defendant 1 from infringing the VOLTAS Limited ‘plaintiff’ registered trademark(s) through use of the registered and well-known trademarks VOLTAS and/or the VOLTAS Logo on the website www.myvoltascare.com
Counsel for plaintiff submitted that the plaintiff adopted the mark “VOLTAS” over 65 years ago in the year 1954, as not only a trademark but also as its corporate name and trading style and the continuous and extensive use of the trademark “VOLTAS” by the plaintiff over a long period of time spanning a wide geographical area coupled with extensive promotion and publicity, the trademark enjoys an unparalleled reputation and goodwill and has become a well-known mark.
It was also submitted that defendant 1 had copied identically the entire look, feel, colour scheme, photographs of the Plaintiff’s website and therefore, the defendant 1 is intentionally and dishonestly defrauding customers by projecting itself to be the plaintiff.
The Court observed that the plaintiff has a good prime facie case in its favour and the activities of defendant 1 are causing irreparable loss and injury to the plaintiff. The balance of the convenience also lies in favour of the plaintiff. Further it was noted that the objective of granting an injunction would be defeated by the delay and issuance of notice to the opposite party.
The Court thus granted an ex parte injunction by restraining the defendant from “using the Plaintiff’s registered and well-known trademark VOLTAS and/or the VOLTAS Logo, and/or any mark deceptively similar to the Plaintiff’s trademarks and/or formative marks in any manner including though not limited to in relation to advertising, directly or indirectly offering any goods or services, using or registering corporate names, domain names, including the Impugned Website, www.myvoltascare.com, or listings on social media websites or e-commerce sites or doing any other act amounting to infringement of the Plaintiff’s registered trademarks.”
The Court also directed to lock/block/suspend and disable the domain name/ website www.myvoltascare.com.
[Voltas Limited v. Ashok Kumar, 2022 SCC OnLine Del 1823, decided on 20-06-2022]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
Geetanjali Visvanathan, Kruttika Vijay and Abhishek Tripathy, Advocates, for the Plaintiff.
*Arunima Bose, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.
