Case Law Details
Dolphin Mart Private Limited Vs Avenue Supermarts Limited & Anr (Delhi High Court)
Conclusion: In present facts of the case, the Hon’ble High Court while considering the application under Trademarks Act have observed that it is well settled that a composite trademark is not to be dissected to determine whether there is any deceptive similarity with the impugned trademark and comparison has to be by taking the rival marks as a whole.
Facts: In present facts of the case, the Plaintiff Company have the trademark d’mart Exclusif which includes home décor and gifting solutions to connoisseurs ranging from silverware, handmade crystalware, bronzeware, hand crafted marble art pieces, limited edition pieces etc. Case of the Plaintiff is that it coined and adopted the name d’mart in 1992 where prefix ‘d’ represents Dolphin which is the name of Plaintiff Group and the Company and suffix ‘Mart’ was adopted to represent the size of the store which was about 10,000 Sq. ft.Plaintiff has obtained registrations of d’mart composite trademarks in Classes 14, 21 and 25.
Plaintiff states that on 02.03.2017 it came across an advertisement of Defendant No.1 for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) for its supermarket business under the brand DMART for 08.03.2017. On inquiry, Plaintiff learnt that Defendants are engaged in business of running supermarkets under the relevant trademark. Plaintiff also learnt that Defendant No. 1 applied for registration of the trademarks D MART/DMART device/D MART MINIMAX in Classes 14, 21 and 25, which are either objected to by the Registrar of Trade Marks and/or are under opposition. It is this advertisement in the news pertaining to Defendants’ IPO for DMART supermarket, which triggered the filing of this suit.
The Hon’ble High Court observed that for establishing infringement under Section 29(2) of the 1999 Act, Plaintiff would have to prima facie establish similarity/identity of rival marks, similarity/identity of goods such that there is likelihood of confusion amongst the members of the public and/or likelihood of association.
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