Delhi High Court grants interim injunction in favour of Casio musical keyboard

The Delhi High Court recently passed a permanent injunction order in favour of Japanese electronics company Casio in relation to its musical keyboards named ‘Electronic Keyboard’..Casio had approached the Court against a firm named Riddhi Siddhi Retail Venture which was selling its musical keyboards with the registered trademark Blueberry under the brand name Nexus 32.It was stated that the defendant had adopted a near identical design for its keyboard. The plaintiff emphasised that even the features of the two keyboards were the same.However, the defendant stated that plaintiff’s design suffered from lack of novelty and was similar to several others products being sold in the market..After considering the case, and examining the pictures as well as physical samples of the two keyboards, Justice C Hari Shankar said that in this matter, there was no need to travel down the thorny path, as the actual physical articles showed the two keyboards to be deceptively similar in design.“At a bare glance, it is clear that the plaintiff‘s and the defendants‘ keyboards are deceptively similar in design. The various similarities between the two, highlighted paras 12, 14 and 15 supra, as alleged in the plaint, actually stand borne out even from a viewing of the physical samples of the two keyboards. As such, it is clear that the design of the defendant‘s keyboard is an “obvious imitation” of the suit design within the meaning of Section 22(1)12 of the Designs Act,” the Court said.The bench, therefore, confirmed the ad interim injunction granted by the Additional District Judge (ADJ) in Casio’s favour. The Court said that injunction will be in place till the disposal of the suit..Advocates Rishi Bansal, Arpit and Deepak appeared for the plaintiff.Respondents were represented through advocate Arnav Goyal..[Read Order]