Delhi HC grants Adobe damages of Rs 2 Cr for trademark infringement
text_fields
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court granted over Rs 2 crore as damages to the US-based computer software company Adobe over trademark infringement.
Adobe had filed a lawsuit alleging the same against Namase Patel, IANS reported. Patel registered similar domain names for various computer software and other IT-related services.
The court restrained Patel and others associated with him from registering any domain name with the trademarks 'Adobe', 'Photoshop', or 'Spark'. 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.
The court also barred Patel from disclosing any Adobe-related confidential material to any third party.
Justice Shankar said, "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."
The court said Adobe should be entitled to the amount for 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.