Delhi High Court grants interim relief to luggage brand Mokobara in trademark case

The Delhi High Court recently granted interim relief to new-age luggage bag manufacturer Mokobara in a trademark case, by restraining certain individuals (defendants) from producing identical products [Mokobara Lifestyle Private Limited v. Mr. Fazal Mohamed Yakub Patka And Ors]..Justice Amit Bansal found that, prima facie, Mokobara’s trademark rights were being infringed through the production and sale of deceptively similar and virtually identical products by the defendants. “In my prima-facie view, the use of the Device is confusingly similar to the Registered Device of the Plaintiff (Mokobara products) and amounts to infringement of the Plaintiff’s rights. Also, the Impugned Trade Dress, is virtually identical with that of the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress and therefore violates the Plaintiff’s common law rights in the same,” the Court noted. .The Court added that the only plausible reason for such similarities was that the defendants were misusing Mokobara’s reputation to pass off their goods as that of Mokobara’s.“The Defendants cannot possibly have any plausible justification to adopt the Impugned Device and the Impugned Trade Dress in respect of identical products, being suitcases, except for an ulterior motive to misuse the reputation of the Plaintiff’s Registered Device and Trade Dress and thereby pass off its goods as that of the Plaintiff’s goods. A prima facie case is, thus, made out on behalf of the Plaintiff,” the May 30 order said. .Therefore, the Court passed an ex-parte ad interim order to restrain the defendants from producing such products in a style that was deceptively or confusingly similar to that of Mokobara products. The order was passed ex parte (without hearing the other side) since no counsel appeared on behalf of the defendants despite advanced notice. .Mokobara’s lawyers had submitted that the brand has a unique rectangular design and a distinct trade dress that has been registered under the Trade Marks Act.The Court was further told that in April 2025, Mokobara came across of a website called 'Ventex Germany', which was run by the defendants and which sold similar-looking suitcases under the name ‘Greenland’. It was discovered that the defendants also widely publicised their products on social media. Mokobara argued that the defendants had copied every single aspect of Mokobara suitcases, including the unique colour combinations, piping, horizontal ridges, placement of the device, yellow-checkered inner-lining with squares bearing the letter ‘m’, etc.It was Mokobara's case that the defendants had deliberately and calculatedly done this, with a dishonest intention to mislead the public into believing that their products were those of Mokobara.The matter will be heard next on October 10. .Advocates Prashant Gupta, Aadhar Nautiyal and Karan Singh appeared for Mokobara..[Read Order]