Delhi HC grants over Rs 2 crore to Adobe in trademark infringement case

The Delhi High Court, while hearing a lawsuit alleging trademark infringement by Namase Patel over Adobe's name, has granted over Rs 2 crore as damages to the US-based computer software company.

The accused had registered similar domain names for various computer software and other IT-related services.

Patel and others associated with him have been restrained from registering any domain name with the trademarks 'Adobe', 'Photoshop', or 'Spark', which could be considered an infringement of the company's marks.

Justice C. Hari Shankar directed that access to the websites copying Adobe's mark shall remain blocked, and the same be transferred to Adobe to avoid their misuse after the expiry of their term.

He also said that Patel is barred from disclosing any Adobe-related confidential material to any third party.

"These damages are intended to be deterrent in nature given the nature of activities of Defendant-1 (Namase Patel) and the fact that he stands recognised, even in foreign jurisdictions, as being an inveterate and habitual cyber-squatter and domain name infringer," Justice Shankar said, while directing that Adobe shall be entitled to the required amount of damages of Rs 2,00,01,000 as claimed in the suit.

Representing Adobe, advocates Shwetasree Majumder, Tanya Varma and Prithvi Gulati submitted the orders passed by the National Arbitration Forum and the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre to the court, revealing that Patel is "habitually involved in cyber-squatting and infringing domain names of various entities".

The court said these orders clearly indicate that Patel is an inveterate cyber-squatter, whose main sphere of activities involves infringing well-known domain names by using deceptively similar domain names and thereafter indulging in further misuse and infringing activities.

--IANS

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