Delhi High Court Restrains A Tech Company From Selling Refurbished Hard Drive In Reverse Passing Off Case

Recently, on February 26, 2024, The Delhi High Court has granted an ex-parte ad interim injunction to the Western Digital Technologies (Plaintiff) in the case of Western Digital Technologies Inc & Anr v. Geonix International Private Limited¹ on grounds of trademark infringement and reverse passing off, thereby restraining the Geonix International Private Limited (Defendant) to sell the impugned hard-drive disks.

The plaintiff in the present case had alleged that the defendant has been refurbishing the plaintiff’s “WD” outdated hard drives and reselling them under their brand name “GEONIX” which can be authenticated from the internal report generated after connecting the hard drive to the device which pops the name of Plaintiff only which indicates the connection of goods with the Plaintiff. The plaintiff further alleged that the Defendant had altered the model and serial number of the Plaintiff’s device and selling them as new and unused hard drive under their branding to mislead the consumers. This unwarranted removal of the Plaintiff’s mark from their goods and selling them under the new branding of “GEONIX” amounts to trademark infringement as well as reverse passing off, as the Defendant has been selling the goods of the Plaintiff without their prior permission.

The court in the prima facie opinion held that the defendant unlawful activities will decimate the painstakingly built goodwill of plaintiff. The said violation will fall against Section 102 and 103 of the Trademarks Act which talks about falsely applying any Trademark to goods and services as the wrongful misappropriation of another’s goods and services will cause deception amongst the consumers.