Delhi High Court restrains pizzerias infringing Domino’s trademark

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has restrained 15 pizzerias from infringing the popular Domino’s trademark, underscoring "disastrous consequences" on human health if it was allowed to continue.

Justice Saurabh Banerjee was hearing a suit filed by the popular chain Domino’s Pizza, a Delaware-based corporation, seeking an ad interim injunction on 15 entities from using deceptively similar marks, such as "Domnic’s Pizza, Dominic Pizza, Dominic’s Pizza, Domnik Pizza and Daminic Pizza".

On May 28, the court in its order said, "It is prima facie evident that the marks of the defendants (15 entities) are deceptively similar and phonetically identical to the plaintiff no 1 (Domino’s intellectual property (IP) holder corporation), erstwhile trade name Dominick’s Pizza." As the dispute involved edible products, the court noted, the threshold for establishing deceptive similarity was lower than for other products.

"In essence, any confusion between such products, if allowed to continue, can lead to disastrous consequences on human health. Therefore, this court has to adopt a more cautious and stringent approach for judging the likelihood of confusion and to exercise greater care," the order read.

Ruling in favour of the corporation in the interim, the court restrained the outlets and their agents from using the "nearly identical or deceptively similar marks" till the next date of hearing on September 17.

The court also directed online food aggregators Zomato and Swiggy to de-list, take down and suspend the identical or similar listings of the 15 entities from their mobile application, website or any other platform.

In the plea, the corporation said Domino’s was founded in the year 1960 in Michigan, USA, by Tom Monaghan and his brother James when the brothers purchased Dominick’s Pizza, a pizza store owned by Dominick DiVarti in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and in 1965, after the brothers purchased two more restaurants, the name was changed from Dominick’s to Domino’s Pizza.

According to the plea, there were over 21,000 Domino’s Pizza stores across all continents, and the corporation had been continuously and uninterruptedly using the trademarks Domino’s and Domino’s Pizza.