Delhi High Court Dismisses boAt's Second Bid to Restrain 'BOULT' Wordmark

The Delhi High Court has dismissed boAt owner Imagine Marketing Pvt. Ltd.'s second interim injunction application in its pending trademark suit against Exotic Mile, holding that the company was effectively seeking the same relief on the same facts that had not been granted earlier.

Justice Jyoti Singh observed that the earlier order was unambiguous in limiting the injunction to certain device marks.

Since boAt had not sought any clarification or modification or appealed that part of the order, the court could not revisit the issue through a fresh interim application.

"It was as clear as day that there was no injunction qua the wordmark BOULT," the court observed.

Imagine Marketing filed the trademark suit in 2019, alleging that Exotic Mile's use of the wordmark BOULT and related device marks infringed its registered BOAT and boAt trademarks and amounted to passing off.

At the initial stage of the suit, the court granted an ex parte interim injunction restraining the use of both the wordmark BOULT and certain device marks. When the first interim injunction application was finally decided in January 2020, however, the operative directions restrained only specified device marks and the tagline "UNPLUG YOURSELF." The wordmark BOULT did not form part of the final operative order.

Exotic Mile challenged that decision before a division bench. In September 2025, the bench upheld the injunction against the device marks but removed the restraint on the tagline. During those proceedings, Exotic Mile informed the court that it had discontinued the impugned marks, except two device marks that it intended to phase out in August 2025. It also informed the bench that it had transitioned to the mark GOBOULT.

After the appeal was decided, Imagine Marketing filed the present application. It argued that the omission of the wordmark BOULT from the 2020 operative order was merely an oversight because the judgment had nevertheless found BOULT to be phonetically similar to BOAT.

Senior Advocate Jayant Mehta, appearing for Imagine Marketing, argued that the division bench had affirmed the findings on deceptive similarity while upholding the injunction against the device marks. According to him, the same reasoning necessarily extended to the wordmark BOULT.

Appearing for Exotic Mile, Senior Advocate Akhil Sibal argued that the application amounted to a second attempt to obtain relief that had not been granted in 2020. He pointed out that Imagine Marketing had neither appealed nor sought clarification or modification of that order.

Accepting that objection, the court held that a second application for interim injunction on the same facts can be entertained only if there are changed circumstances or undue hardship. It found that neither requirement had been established.

The court also rejected the contention that the division bench's observations constituted a changed circumstance. It held that the appellate court had merely recorded what was already evident from the January 2020 order. The injunction had been confined to the device marks.

On the plea of undue hardship, the court noted that Exotic Mile had consistently maintained that it had transitioned to GOBOULT and was no longer manufacturing goods under the BOULT trademark.

Imagine Marketing relied on screenshots from e-commerce platforms to allege continued use. Exotic Mile responded that those listings related to discontinued products and archived pages. The court noted that this explanation had not been rebutted.

Holding that granting the relief sought would effectively rewrite both the earlier single judge's decision and the division bench judgment, the court ruled that such a course was "beyond the remit of this Court."

The application was accordingly dismissed.