Delhi High Court sets aside order refusing injunction to WOW Momo; restrains use of ‘WOW BURGER’ mark

A Division Bench of the Delhi High Court recently set aside a single judge’s September 2025 order refusing an interim injunction to WOW Momo Foods, and has restrained the use of the mark “WOW BURGER”, holding that it infringes WOW Momo’s registered trademarks WOW MOMO, WOW DIMSUMS and WOW MOMO INSTANT. [Wow Momo v. Wow Burger]

The judgment was delivered by a Division Bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla, which allowed the appeal filed by WOW Momo against the dismissal of its interim application in the trademark infringement suit.

The Bench said,

"The idea of combining an exclamation with the mundane reference to the food item is inventive and, consequently, distinctive. To our mind, the learned Single Judge has concentrated on whether WOW, seen as a standalone expression, is, or is not, distinctive, and has, in the process, overlooked the fact that, when used in conjunction with the name of the food item, the combined mark becomes distinctive in nature."

WOW Momo stated that it had coined and adopted the mark WOW! MOMO in 2008 and operates over 600 outlets in more than 30 cities. According to the plaint, WOW Momo discovered in December 2024 that WOW Burger, the first respondent, intended to launch business activities in India using the marks WOW BURGER and related logos. It then moved the Commercial Division of the Delhi High Court, seeking to restrain use of the mark on the ground that it infringed its “WOW” family of trademarks.

The single judge, by an order dated September 12, dismissed the injunction application, holding that “wow” was a common English word lacking distinctiveness and that WOW Momo could not claim monopoly over the term.

Aggrieved, the company filed an appeal before the Division Bench.

Setting aside the order, the Division Bench held that the single judge’s reasoning was flawed, since the distinctiveness of the mark arose from the pairing of the exclamation “WOW” with a food item, not from the word “WOW” alone.

The Court held that the rival mark WOW BURGER was deceptively similar to the appellant’s registered marks and that its use would likely lead consumers to assume an association between the two.

“A consumer of average intelligence and imperfect reflection, who is aware of, or has seen, the appellant’s mark WOW MOMO would, when he later comes across respondent’s mark WOW BURGER, be, at the very least, inclined to presume the existence of an association between the two marks,” the Bench said.

It further held that such likelihood of association would satisfy the test of infringement under Section 29(2)(b) of the Trade Marks Act. The Court emphasised that differences in design, colour or get-up were immaterial in assessing infringement, which requires a direct comparison of marks.

The Division Bench also found that the respondents had replicated the branding concept conceived by WOW Momo by combining the exclamation “WOW” with a food item name to indicate excellence in quality.

“The idea of conveying the message that the food dispensed by it is of optimum quality by combining, with the name of the food item such as MOMO or DIMSUMS, the exclamation WOW would stand replicated if the respondent were to use WOW BURGER,” the judgment stated.

The Court further recognised that WOW Momo’s marks formed a “family of marks” with the prefix “WOW” as the common and dominant feature. The use of “WOW BURGER” by another entity, it said, would naturally lead consumers to believe it was part of the same brand family.

At the same time, the Court clarified that WOW Momo could not claim exclusivity over “WOW” as a standalone mark but that this did not diminish protection for its registered composite marks.

“The absence of any registration for WOW does not, in any manner, erode the appellant’s claim of exclusivity over the mark WOW MOMO or impact its entitlement to relief against infringement… such as WOW BURGER."

WOW Momo was represented by Senior Advocate Dayan Krishnan with Advocates Ankur Sangal, Ankit Arvind, Shashwat Rakshit, Amrit Sharma and Shreedhar Kale from Khaitan & Co.

[Read Judgment]