Recently, the Delhi High Court passed an ex-parte ad interim injunction in favour of D.B. Engineering Pvt. Ltd. (“Plaintiff”) against multiple defendants, including an erstwhile employee of the Plaintiff.
The Plaintiff claimed that it adopted the registered mark ATLAS KNIVES in 1986-87 in relation to its business of manufacturing industrial steel knives, cutters, etc. It also averred that it has a registration for the ATLAS KNIVES mark since 2014 and exports its products to more than sixty countries. As per the Plaintiff, one of the defendants, who was an ex-employee of the Plaintiff, started a firm called “Atlas Knives & Tools, Faridabad” in collusion with other defendants, and was using the ATLAS trade name for identical products. It also claimed that the defendants were using the ATLAS mark as part of the domain name, ATLASKNIVESTOOLS.COM, various email addresses and on product brochures showing the entire product line of the Plaintiff.
While ruling that the Plaintiff had established a prima facie case for the grant of an ex parte ad interim injunction, the court noted that defendant who was the ex-employee of the Plaintiff was fully aware of the Plaintiff’s rights in the ATLAS name and mark and had a greater duty not to indulge in such illegal conduct. Accordingly, it restrained the defendants from using the mark/name ATLAS, ATLAS KNIVES and ATLAS KNIVES AND TOOLS either as a trademark, trade name, domain name or as a part of email addresses.
D.B. Engineering Pvt. Ltd. v. Pawan Sharma & Ors., CS(COMM) 404/2022, Order dt. June 2, 2022