The Delhi High Court has prohibited the makers of ‘NIC Natural Ice Creams’ from using the trademarks ‘NATURALS,’ following a suit filed by the famous ice-cream brand for trademark infringement.
The order was passed by the Single-Judge Bench of Justice Jyoti Singh, which observed that NATURALS has made a prima facie case for grant of an ex-parte injunction, balance of convenience lies in their favour, and they will suffer irreparable loss, if the order was not granted.
As per the High Court order, Defendants no 1 to 3, along with their subordinates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, family members, distributors, agents, franchisees, dealers, servants and all other persons claiming through or under them or anyone who may be acting for and on their behalf, were prohibited from using the Plaintiffs’ marks NATURAL, NATURALS or NIC Natural Ice Creams, NIC, in any form or manner, including any marks identical or deceptively similar, or adopting same colours, trade dress and packaging for their products, so as to amount to passing off.
The defendants was also prohibited from using the domain names ‘nicnaturalicecreams.com,’ ‘nicicecreams.com,’ or any other domain name, email address or handle containing the mark NATURAL.
The Bench further told the defendants not to use NATURAL or NATURALS as meta tags or purchase the same as keywords under the Google’s Adwords programme.
NATURALS is an Indian ice-cream brand, which was started in 1984 and now has over 140 franchises in 42 cities across the country.
NATURALS Ice Cream was represented by Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi, along with Advocates Tejveer Singh Bhatia, Rohan Swarup, Kunal Vats, Tanya Arora, Utsav Mukherjee and Anjalika Arora.
They apprised the High Court that NIC Natural Ice Creams, started by a partner of one of its franchises, was using the marks deceptively similar to NATURALS.
They alleged that the defendants dishonestly registered marks incorporating the NATURAL mark, which was an essential part of the plaintiff’s trademark.
The defendants were aware that NIC was commonly used as an acronym for the Natural ice cream business, added the Counsels for NATURALS.
They contended that the defendants also used an identical shade of green colour in the mark, similar to the one being used by the Plaintiffs and even incorporated the word NATURAL ICE CREAMS underneath the mark, thus enhancing the similarity.
The High Court issued summons on the suit and directed the defendants to file their written statements within 30 days. Justice Singh fixed December 21 as the next date of hearing before the Joint Registrar.
Advocate Aditya Gupta appeared for Google.
(Case title: Siddhant Ice Creams LLP & Ors. vs Ameet Pahilani & Ors)