Misc First Appeal No. 3951/2021, the plaintiff had approached the district court for an interim injunction to restrain the defendants from using "SALESKEN", which was deceptively similar to their registered mark SASKEN. The City Civil Judge had refused to grant an injunction in favour of the plaintiff. Hence, the aggrieved plaintiff had filed the present appeal even though OS No. 6500/2020 was not yet conclusively decided, and only the IA for interim injunction was disposed of.
Background:
The Plaintiff company was originally incorporated in 1989 in
In
The plaintiff, therefore, filed O.S. No. 6500/2020 before the VIII City Civil Judge Bengaluru and sought an ad interim injunction against the use of SALESKEN by the Defendants. The defendants, on their part, entered appearance and denied all the allegations of the plaintiff. They clarified that their mark SALESKEN was registered in 2019 after due process by the competent authorities, and there is no room for confusion as the plaintiff is providing technological services while the defendant provides sales support services to enhance sales by use of Data analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Also, the fact that the suffix KEN is used in both SASKEN and SALESKEN does not make the words phonetically identical. The customer base, as well as the nature of services, was different according to the defendant, and as such, there is no room for confusion between the
Decision of the Court
Based on the averments of both the parties, the trial court considered the issue in the light of the decided cases. It held that while the case was being admitted for hearing, the plaintiff had failed to make a prima facie case for the grant of ad-interim injunction. As such, although the case was admitted for hearing, no interim injunction was granted to restrain the use of the mark SALESKEM by the Defendants herein.
Aggrieved by the decision of the Trial court, the plaintiff filed the instant appeal vide Miscellaneous First Appeal bearing no. 3951/2021(IPR) before the
The court examined the issue at hand in detail in light of the decided case laws cited by both the parties and the trademark registrations furnished by both parties. Moreover, as explained by the plaintiff, SASKEN is derived from "SAS" for "Silicon Automation System" and "KEN" meaning "Knowledge".
On the other hand, the defendant explained that SALESKEN is an acronym for "SYSTEM for APPROPRIATE LEAD ENGAGEMENT in SALES using KNOWLEDGE ENHANCING NUGGETS.
The court relied on the judgement of the Supreme Court as cited by the parties with respect to their respective stance and observed that in the matter of
The court further cited the Apex court's judgement in
Further, in
Thus, on examining the records placed before the court, the Hon'ble Judge reiterated that the logo, number of letters, and the manner in which SASKEN and SALESKEN are written are completely different. Further, the court held that as per Section 28(3) read with Sections 30 and 31 of the Trademarks Act, a registered owner of a trademark cannot be restrained from the use of the registered trademark by any other trademark owner till the matter is conclusively decided by the appropriate forum before which the dispute is pending adjudication. As such, given that the visual depiction of the plaintiff's mark shows a red coloured prism with SASKEN written in capital letters and the mark of the defendant has 'salesken' written in the lower case along with a square logo predominantly in black colour with a red colour tick mark in the left part of the black square. As such, there is no possibility of causing any confusion in the pictorial representation or the phonetic sound of the words.
Based on the foregoing deliberations, the court dismissed the instant appeal, and no interim injunction was granted against the defendants, even by the Appellate Court. The court also held that during a hearing for the grant of a temporary injunction, the court could not hold a mini-trial and pre-empt the outcome of the dispute in the interim injunction stage.
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