In a suit for permanent injunction restraining infringement of trademark, copyright, design and passing off and for ancillary reliefs, the Delhi High Court has held that use of the mark ‘The TICER’ by the defendant as opposed to ‘TIGER’ of the plaintiff is a case of ‘chunking’ or ‘word superiority effect’.
The High Court in this regard observed so as people generally presume words without reading each alphabet, as human mind is capable of recognising words with few clues.
The court in Mallcom (India) Ltd. v. Rakesh Kumar, where both plaintiff and defendant were in business of safety industrial shoes and the plaintiff was the prior user, granted permanent injunction on use of identically and deceptively similar mark which also had same font.
It was held that the mark adopted by the defendants is identical and deceptively similar to the mark of the plaintiff with the only difference between the two being of alphabet ‘G’ in the mark of the plaintiffs and of alphabet ‘C’ in the mark of the defendants.
The court was also of the view that the word ‘the’ in the mark of the defendants is not capable of distinguishing the two. Ex-parte ad-interim order of injunction was made absolute during the pendency of the suit.
19 March 2019