The court upheld the trademarks' protection against infringement, emphasizing the role of well-known trademarks in deterring cyber-squatting and unauthorized usage.

JUDGMENT (Oral)

1. The plaintiff, which was founded in 1982, is the second largest US based personal software company, and claims to have annual turnover in the region of US dollars five billion. It has a global presence and disseminates various products and services, used the world over under various trademarks, which are all licensed. The present suit concerns itself with `ADOBE', `SPARK'/`ADOBE SPARK' and `PHOTOSHOP' trademarks, registered in favour of the plaintiff and, as per the plaint, infringed by Defendant 1 Namase Patel.

2. The plaintiff claims to have adopted the word marks `ADOBE' as early as in 1986, and to have been using it, in respect of its products and services, worldwide since then. The trademark is stated to have been derived from the `Adobe Creek' in Los Altos, California, which flowed behind the houses of the founders of the plaintiff company. By order dated 30th May 2008 in CS(OS) 1784/2007, this Court has already recognized `ADOBE' to be a well-known trademark within the meaning of Section 2(zg) of the Trademarks Act, 1999 (`the Trademarks Act'). By virtue thereof, and by operation of Section 29(4) of the Trademarks Act, the mark `ADOBE' becomes entitled to a higher degree of protection.

3. The plaint asserts that the use of the mark `ADOBE' was commenced in India, by the plaintiff, in 1993. The registration held by the plaintiff, for its marks `ADOBE' and `PHOTOSHOP' have been provided in a tabular form, thus, in para 11 of the plaint:

4. `ADOBE' also forms part of the domain names www.adobe.com, www.adobe.net and www.adobe.in (`the adobe domain names', hereinafter) owned by the plaintiff.

5. The plaintiff also claims proprietorial rights in respect of the trademark `SPARK'/`ADOBE SPARK' which, though not registered in India, was the name given by the plaintiff to its suite of mobile and web tools used to create visual content, which debuted on 19th May 2016.

6. Defendant 1 is alleged, in the plaint, to be infringing the plaintiff's `ADOBE' mark by his domain names www.addobe.com and www.adobee.com. There can possibly be no dispute about the fact that the domain names www.addobe.com and www.adobee.com are confusingly similar to `ADOBE' mark and, therefore, infringed the `ADOBE' mark and the adobe domain names of the plaintiff within the meaning of Section 29 of the Trademarks Act.

7. The manner in which the `PHOTOSHOP' and `SPARK' marks of the plaintiff are being infringed and misused by Defendant 1 is set out in para 18 of the plaint, which reads thus:

"18. That in the present case too, Defendant No.1 's bad faith is borne out by the fact that Defendant No.1 is using several hundred sub-domains within the impugned domains www.addobe.com and www.adobee.com which include well-known trademarks/products of the Plaintiff such as "Photoshop" "Spark" and are being used for the purposes of infecting an unsuspecting user's computer with malware......"

8. Defendant 1 is also alleged to be using the "catch-all" e-mail service provided by Above.com. A catch-all e-mail service is stated to be a service provided by which the person availing the services of the provider would acquire access to all e-mails, which may misspell the domain of the e-mail ID, which follows after "@". In other words, as is explained by Ms. Majumder, by using the said service, Defendant 1 was ensur