The Delhi High Court has granted an ex parte ad interim injunction restraining Getmohit Cab Private Limited, Shri Bheru Nath Motor Body, and unidentified John Doe entities from manufacturing, deploying, marketing, or advertising buses under the “BHARATBENZ” mark, in a trademark infringement suit filed by Daimler India Commercial Vehicles Pvt Ltd. Justice Jyoti Singh, finding that the plaintiff had established a prima facie case and that irreparable harm would follow if the injunction were withheld, passed a sweeping restraint order covering the use of any mark, logo, label, device, or trade dress deceptively similar to Daimler India’s registered trademarks in relation to buses and allied services.
The suit was triggered by a discovery made around the end of November 2025, when Daimler India came across a video on the social media platform X showing a bus bearing the “BHARATBENZ” mark and logo on its front grille, while the steering wheel carried branding of a different manufacturer — Leyland. The video further revealed that the bus lacked essential safety features including an emergency exit and air suspension. Daimler India, represented by Advocates Pravin Anand, Vaishali Mittal, Siddhant Chamola, and Jitesh P. Gupta, alleged that the defendants were manufacturing and deploying these buses without authorisation, and were promoting and booking them through websites and online platforms where “Bharat Benz” was listed as a bus type — a practice the plaintiff contended was misleading consumers into believing a commercial association with Daimler India.
The plaintiff argued that such unauthorised deployment of identical or deceptively similar marks for identical services was likely to cause public confusion and dilute the distinctiveness of the well-known “BENZ” family of marks. It further contended that the inferior quality of the buses — evidenced by the missing safety features — was actively damaging the reputation and goodwill attached to the BharatBenz brand. The Court accepted these submissions at this stage, noting that the balance of convenience favoured the plaintiff, and restrained the defendants and all persons acting on their behalf from any use of the mark across manufacturing, marketing, sale, supply, deployment, display, and advertising. The matter is next listed for 22 July 2026.
The order is notable not merely as a routine trademark injunction but for the consumer safety dimension that underpins it. The combination of counterfeit branding with demonstrably substandard safety standards — no emergency exit, no air suspension — transforms what might otherwise be a conventional passing-off dispute into a matter with potential regulatory and public safety ramifications. For brand owners in the commercial vehicle segment, the decision reinforces the utility of John Doe injunctions in addressing distributed infringement networks where the full chain of manufacturing, branding, and deployment may span multiple unidentified actors.