Trademark Suit Filed For Infringement/ Passing Off Was Successful At the First Stage

8th August, 2018 - 4:39 am Categories: Legal Issues 0 Comments

(L’AirLiquideSocieteAnonyme  pour  l’etude  et l’exploitation  desprocedes  Georges  Claude  and Anr vs. Liquid air & Ors.)

 L’AirLiquideSocieteAnonyme  pour  l’etude  et l’exploitation  desprocedes  Georges  Claude  and Anr, Plaintiff No. 1, a company incorporated under the laws of France and operating in Indian territory through Air Liquide India Holding Private Limited,  Plaintiff no. 2 under the trade name “Air Liquide”, and domain name www.airliquide.com. The Plaintiffs being vigilant enough to protect their tradename issued a Cease and Desist notice against the Defendants as soon as they became aware of the unlawful acts of the defendants, wherein the latter was using deceptively similar trade name “Liquid Air” and domain name www.liquidair.in under the same class of goods as that of the Plaintiffs. The same was admitted by the Defendant and they had undertaken to accept the demand and thereby refrain from using the infringing trademark. It was also agreed that a MoU will sign for the same purpose. However, the defendants later denied the compliance and refrained from signing the aforesaid MoU. Thus, the Plaintiffs filed a suit in the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi against defendants seeking appropriate remedies under the laws.

In the aforesaid case, the Plaintiffs were able to successfully establish a prima facie- case before the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi and thereby secured injunction in its favour vide order dated 09.05.2018, which restrained the defendants from directly or indirectly dealing in any goods/service similar to that of the Plaintiffs as well as from using any name similar to that of Plaintiff’s domain or trade name.

Despite the above mentioned order passed by the Hon’ble High Court, the defendants in contempt of the said order, continued to use their impugned trademark through their website www.liquidair.in. Thus, the Plaintiffs filed a Contempt application under Order 39 Rule 2A of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 against the defendants for disobedience of injunction order. However, after receiving the notice of such application, the defendants were compelled to pull out their website before the next date of hearing on 01.08.2018.  Consequently, the application was disposed off on 1st August 2018. However, the Court clearly reiterated the injunction against the defendant and sternly directed them from refraining to use the impugned trademarks for the same or similar business.

Author: Pratistha Sinha, Associate, Priya Singh, Legal Intern at  Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorneys. In case of any queries please contact/write back to us at pratistha@iiprd.com.