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The Delhi High Court vide its judgment dated July 04, 2018 in a
case titled Rohit Singh vs. Apple Inc. ruled in favour of Apple in
a suit for passing off. The said suit was filed by the plaintiffs,
Rohit Singh and Vyooh Low Level Computing LL for an injunction to
restrain the defendant Apple Inc. USA from using the mark
"SPLITVIEW‟ in relation to any of its software products.
Apple primarily argued that the phrase "SPLITVIEW is
inherently descriptive as it describes the characteristics and the
intended purpose of product with respect to which it is used. It
was argued that the plaintiff's product "SPLITVIEW‟,
which is a descriptive term, informs the users of the precise
"view" "splitting" function of the
plaintiff's software. Apple further argued that the combination
of the terms "Split" and "View‟ was in no way
unique to the plaintiffs and there were at least 1839 patents with
a priority date before September, 2005 which used the combination
terms "SPLITVIEW‟ or the phrase
"SPLITVIEW". The main contention of the Plaintiff
was that its trade mark "SplitView" was not a dictionary
word but a unique combination of two English language words and was
not descriptive and merely because third parties were also using
the term "SPLITVIEW", did not make the term
descriptive.
The Delhi High Court after hearing the parties refused to grant
the interim injunction against the use of the term SPLITVIEW by
Apple. The Court observed that at the stage of interim injunction
application, it is required to protect the plaintiffs, only if
finds the defendant to be passing off its goods or services as that
of the plaintiffs. The Court held that in an action for passing
off, the plaintiff cannot be entitled to interim injunction, if the
use by the defendant of the phrase / term "SPLITVIEW",
whether as a trade mark of one of the features of its product or as
descriptive of the said feature, will buy the product of the
defendant assuming it to be that of the plaintiffs. The Court held
that the plaintiff's contentions of suffering injury of
dilution by wrongful association of the plaintiff's products
with that of the defendant or by reverse confusion are questions
which can be adjudicated only after trial. The suit has now been
fixed for trial wherein several issues including the question on
descriptiveness of Plaintiff's trademark SPLITVIEW have been
framed.
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A Special Bench of five judges of the Delhi High Court has held that had a composite suit in relation to the infringement of a registered design and passing off,