The Delhi High Court has restrained Bytes Infosys India Private Ltd and JB Infosys Pvt Ltd from filing any trademark application for the mark Infosys or Infy. It has directed the companies not to manufacture, market, sell, advertise directly or indirectly goods/services under the trademark/name Infosys till January 17, the next date of hearing.
While issuing summons, Justice Mukul Mudgal observed, “I am prima facie satisfied that Infosys Technologies Ltd is an established name and has been trading and carrying out business under the domain name ‘Infosys’ and it is a well known entity in the field of information technology.”
The court said the user of Infosys, trading and business in such a name by the defendant might cause irreparable harm if ex parte orders were not passed.
On behalf of Infosys, senior counsel Manmohan Singh had submitted in its petition that to protect exclusivity of the mark ‘Infosys’, the company had from time-to-time issued trademark caution notices declaring its ownership of the trademark/service mark/trade name. “Such caution notices have been issued to prevent dilution of the exclusivity of the mark as also alert the existing and potential infringers of the subject trademarks with legal actions. These caution notices have been published in newspapers all over India having wide circulation.”
The company had spent Rs 24,869 crore towards sales promotions, marketing and brand building expenses in the fiscal 2003-2004. The petitioner was incorporated as Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd in July 1981 in Maharashtra and later changed its name to Infosys Technologies Pvt Ltd in June 1992 when it became a public company. Besides hardware business, the company is engaged in software development, maintenance of software systems, software for vertical markets like insurance, securities market, finance, healthcare, dotcom firms like B2B, B2C, web-enabled tools, programming, network solutions, etc.
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