Recently, the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court upheld the injunction order granted by a Single Judge in favor of Oracle America Inc. (“Respondent”) against Sonoo Jaiswal, Javapoint Limited and Javapoint Tech Pvt. Ltd. (“Appellants”), restraining them from using the Respondent’s registered trade mark JAVA as a part of their domain name, www.javatpoint.com, in relation to the providing coding language classes.
Before the Single Judge, the Appellants contended that the term JAVA is a generic programming language which cannot be monopolized by a single entity. Moreover, as per the Appellants, the name of a programming language cannot be used as a trade mark by the Respondent. The Single Judge disagreed with the contentions raised by the Appellants, and subsequently held that the Appellants had used the word JAVA as a part of their trade mark, rather than using it in a descriptive manner. Consequently, the Appellants were restrained from using the JAVAPOINT as well as the JAVA marks as a part of their corporate name and domain name.
At the appellate stage, the Appellant submitted that they have changed their corporate name to TPoint Global Ltd., and TPoint Tech Pvt. Ltd. Therefore, the present dispute was restricted to whether using the JAVA mark in the domain name constituted trade mark infringement.
The court observed that use of a trade mark as a part of the domain name clearly functions as a source identifier for the proprietor, and registration of a domain name containing an identical/similar trade mark would constitute trademark infringement. The court further observed that the Appellant’s website hosted various educational courses and acted as a platform for consumers to contact them. Thus, the word JAVA was not used to describe the services, but rather to serve as an address to identify the Appellants. The court also opined that consumers are also likely to be confused since the Respondent also owns a domain name, www.java.com. Therefore, the court upheld the single judge’s order restraining the Appellant’s use of the domain name JAVAPOINT.COM.
Sonoo Jaiswal & Ors. v. Oracle America Inc. [FAO (OS) (COMM) 98/2024], judgement dt. July 9, 2024
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