Alkem Laboratories Limited V. Prevego Healthcare and Research Pvt. Ltd.

High Court of Delhi | 17 January 2026 Case Number: CS(COMM) 84/2025 Bench: Hon’ble Mr. Justice Tejas Karia

BACKGROUND

The plaintiff, Alkem Laboratories Limited, was established in 1973 and is engaged in research and development, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and sale of pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products in India and in international markets, with a presence in over 40 countries, 19 manufacturing units, over 800 brands and 6 brands featuring among the top 100 pharmaceutical brands in India. The plaintiff claimed rights in the trademarks “A TO Z,” a device mark, “A TO Z-NS,” and an associated logo (collectively “the Plaintiff’s Marks” and “the Plaintiff’s Logo”), as well as in certain trade dresses used on its products (collectively “the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress”).

The plaintiff’s marks “A TO Z” and “A TO Z-NS” were first adopted in 1998 and 2008 respectively and were claimed to be coined and arbitrary marks associated exclusively with the plaintiff’s products in the minds of the public. The plaintiff held registrations for various device marks comprising “A TO Z,” including Application Nos. 1537705 and 1537706 (dated 7 March 2007), 2702805 (dated 21 March 2014) and 1681873 and 1681874 for “A TO Z-NS” (dated 29 April 2008). The plaintiff’s logo was described as a uniquely designed device in which the letters “A” and “Z” are written in a stylised manner, with the word “TO” written in a different colour, also in stylised form, continuously in use since 1998. The plaintiff asserted ownership of copyright in this logo under the Copyright Act, 1957.

The plaintiff placed on record revenue figures for its “A TO Z” range of products in India for the financial years 2014-15 through 2023-24, ranging from approximately ₹9,296.61 lakhs in 2014-15 to a peak of approximately ₹36,487.31 lakhs in 2021-22 and advertising expenditure figures for the same period ranging from approximately ₹183.81 lakhs to ₹451.89 lakhs annually.

The defendant, Prevego Healthcare and Research Pvt. Ltd., was stated to provide pharmaceutical capsules, tablets and syrups across major therapeutic segments and to operate manufacturing facilities certified to ISO, GMP, EGMP and WHO standards. The defendant used the mark “MULTIVEIN AZ” (the “Impugned Mark”) in respect of a nutraceutical/health supplement product (the “Defendant’s Product”) and the plaintiff alleged that the trade dress used on the Defendant’s Product (the “Impugned Trade Dress”) was deceptively similar to the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress.

In the third week of December 2024, the plaintiff came across the Defendant’s Product bearing the Impugned Mark and alleged that it was being used on a product identical to the plaintiff’s products, namely health supplements, with a trade dress deceptively similar to the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress. The plaintiff sent a cease-and-desist notice dated 27 December 2024, to which the defendant replied on 20 January 2025, asserting that the Impugned Mark was distinct from the Plaintiff’s Marks and that the defendant was the registered proprietor of the mark “MULTIVEIN” under Trade Mark Application No. 6547298. Upon receiving this reply, the plaintiff conducted a search of the Trade Marks Registry and discovered that the defendant had filed several further applications, including for “MULTIVEIN” (Application No. 4742710, proposed to be used, dated 12 November 2020), “DAILY-1 MULTIVEIN” (Application No. 6669213, claiming use from 9 November 2019, application dated 15 October 2024), “MULTIVEIN AZ” (Application No. 6799320, claiming use from 14 August 2020, application dated 10 January 2025) and “MULTIVEIN OK” (Application No. 6799321, claiming use from 13 June 2023, application dated 10 January 2025) all in Class 5.

The plaintiff instituted the present suit, CS(COMM) 84/2025 and filed I.A. 2537/2025 under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (“CPC”), seeking an interim injunction restraining infringement of its trademarks and copyright and passing off. By ex parte ad interim order dated 30.01.2025, the defendant and persons acting on its behalf were restrained from marketing, packaging, selling, distributing, exporting, advertising or otherwise dealing in any product bearing the Impugned Mark or any mark identical or deceptively/confusingly/visually/phonetically/conceptually similar to the Plaintiff’s Marks or amounting to infringement of the Plaintiff’s Logo or Plaintiff’s Trade Dress.

By order dated 17.02.2025, the plaintiff’s counsel submitted that the plaintiff did not object to the defendant’s use of the word “MULTIVEIN” simpliciter and would give up its claim for costs and damages if the defendant agreed to give up the use of “AZ” from the Impugned Mark; in the interim, the defendant was permitted to exhaust its existing stock bearing the Impugned Mark.

The defendant filed I.A. 6055/2025 under Order XXXIX Rule 4 of the CPC seeking vacation of the ex parte ad interim order. Notice was issued in this application on 06.03.2025. The defendant also filed I.A. 10127/2025 seeking to place additional documents on record, which was allowed by order dated 08.08.2025, with liberty to the plaintiff to file responsive documents and a note and the defendant was subsequently granted leave to file additional written submissions on 26.08.2025. After conclusion of arguments, judgment was reserved by order dated 12.11.2025.

The plaintiff’s case, in essence, was that the Impugned Mark “MULTIVEIN AZ” was conceptually, phonetically, visually, structurally and confusingly similar to the Plaintiff’s Marks, that the defendant had also copied the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress including its colour scheme and layout and that the defendant was thereby seeking to take unfair advantage of the goodwill and reputation built up by the plaintiff in the “A TO Z” marks since 1998, amounting to infringement and passing off, as well as copyright infringement in respect of the Plaintiff’s Logo and Trade Dress. The plaintiff also raised concerns regarding the public health implications of allowing a third party to deal in pharmaceutical/health-supplement products under a confusingly similar mark, given the lack of control the plaintiff would have over the quality of the defendant’s goods.

The defendant’s case was that it had honestly and bona fide adopted “MULTIVEIN” in August 2020 for nutraceuticals, in the belief that no similar mark existed in that field at the time; that it had built up a substantial independent reputation in “MULTIVEIN” through extensive use, advertising and a wide distribution network across India since its establishment in 2018; that the Plaintiff’s Marks, being device marks, did not confer broad protection over the underlying letters “A” and “Z” in isolation; that “A TO Z” is a generic, descriptive phrase denoting completeness, particularly apt for multivitamin/multi-mineral products which are conventionally described using letters of the alphabet; that the Impugned Mark, taken as a whole, was visually, phonetically and conceptually distinct from the Plaintiff’s Marks given the dominant presence of the word “MULTIVEIN”; and that the plaintiff had concealed material facts from the Court, including the existence of three earlier trademark applications for “A TO Z” in Class 5 that had respectively been opposed, withdrawn and abandoned and the fact that the plaintiff’s pending device mark application for “A TO Z” in Class 5 (Application No. 1270049) remained under opposition since 2007.

ISSUES FOR DETERMINATION

• The first issue before the Court was whether the Plaintiff’s Marks and in particular the expression “A TO Z,” were generic or descriptive in nature in relation to multivitamin and multi-mineral dietary supplement products and if so, whether they had acquired a secondary meaning sufficient to entitle them to trademark protection.
• The second issue was whether the Impugned Mark “MULTIVEIN AZ,” when compared with the Plaintiff’s Marks as a whole applying the anti-dissection rule rather than isolating common letter elements was identical or deceptively similar to the Plaintiff’s Marks such as to give rise to a likelihood of confusion among consumers, warranting relief for infringement and passing off.
• The third issue was whether the plaintiff had concealed material facts from the Court specifically, the existence and status of three earlier trademark applications filed by the plaintiff itself for “A TO Z” in Class 5 (one under opposition, one withdrawn and one abandoned) and if so, whether such concealment disentitled the plaintiff to the equitable relief of an interim injunction.
• The fourth issue was whether the defendant’s use of the Impugned Mark and the Impugned Trade Dress infringed the copyright vested in the plaintiff’s artistic work in the Plaintiff’s Logo and Trade Dress under the Copyright Act, 1957.
• The fifth issue, consequent upon the resolution of the above, was whether the plaintiff was entitled to confirmation of the ex parte ad interim injunction granted on 30.01.2025 or whether the defendant’s application under Order XXXIX Rule 4 of the CPC for vacation of that injunction ought to be allowed.

KEY HOLDINGS OF THE COURT

1. On the question of whether the Plaintiff’s Marks are generic or descriptive, the Court held that “A TO Z” represents completeness or comprehensiveness as a matter of ordinary English usage and that since the Plaintiff’s Products bearing the Plaintiff’s Marks pertain to nutraceuticals and multivitamins a category of products commonly described and differentiated by reference to alphabetical designations of individual vitamins the expression “A TO Z” directly describes the nature of the goods, namely a product encompassing several different types of vitamins “from A to Z.” The Court held that this descriptive quality applies equally to the products sold by both the plaintiff and the defendant. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Godfrey Philips India Ltd. v. Girnar Food & Beverages (P) Ltd., (2004) 5 SCC 257 and Pernod Ricard India Private Limited and Another v. Karanveer Singh Chhabra, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1701, the Court held that generic, descriptive and commonly used expressions, being publici juris, are incapable of attaining distinctiveness or serving as exclusive source identifiers so as to confer monopoly rights, unless they have acquired a secondary meaning and a descriptive mark is entitled to protection only where such secondary meaning is established. The Court found, on the material before it, that the plaintiff could not be permitted to monopolise the use of the letters “A” and “Z,” and noted that the plaintiff had itself, in opposition proceedings before the Trade Marks Registry concerning its own Application No. 1270049, conceded that the protection afforded to its device mark was limited to its unique “intertwined-and-conjoined manner” of stylisation a concession the Court treated as significant evidence against any claim to broader monopoly over the underlying letters. The Court accordingly held that the Plaintiff’s Marks, comprising “A TO Z,” are descriptive and generic in nature.
2. On the question of deceptive similarity, the Court applied the “anti-dissection rule,” holding that a composite or device mark must be compared with the allegedly infringing mark as a whole, rather than by breaking each mark down into its constituent elements for piecemeal comparison. The Court relied on the test of deceptive similarity laid down by the Supreme Court in Kaviraj Pandit Durga Dutt Sharma v. Navaratna Pharmaceutical Laboratories, AIR 1965 SC 980 and on the Supreme Court’s reaffirmation in Pernod Ricard India (supra) that rival marks must be compared as a whole and not by dissection, since consumers perceive trademarks based on overall impression including appearance, structure and commercial impact. Applying Section 17 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 which provides that where a trademark consists of several matters, registration confers an exclusive right to use the trademark taken as a whole and not in its dissected parts the Court held that since the plaintiff had not obtained registration of “A TO Z” as a standalone word mark and since its device mark application for “A TO Z” in Class 5 (the class relevant to the present dispute) remained under opposition, the plaintiff could not claim exclusivity over the letters “A” and “Z” in isolation. The Court found that, considered as a whole, the Impugned Mark “MULTIVEIN AZ” was visually distinct from the Plaintiff’s Marks: the addition of the word “MULTIVEIN” significantly altered the overall sound, rhythm and conceptual meaning of the mark, the colour scheme employed in the Impugned Mark differed from that of the Plaintiff’s Marks and the Impugned Mark taken in its entirety was capable of being readily distinguished from the Plaintiff’s Marks by an average consumer. The Court accordingly held that the Plaintiff’s Marks and the Impugned Mark were neither identical nor deceptively similar and that the precedents relied upon by the plaintiff Kia Wang v. The Registrar of Trademarks & Anr., 2023 SCC OnLine Del 5844; Milfet Oftho Industries v. Allergan Inc., (2004) 12 SCC 624; Novartis AG v. Crest Pharma Pvt. Ltd. and Anr., 2009 SCC OnLine Del 4390; and N. Ranga Rao v. Anil Garg, 2005 SCC OnLine Del 1293 did not assist the plaintiff’s case in the absence of a finding of deceptive similarity.
3. On the plea of concealment of material facts, the Court rejected the defendant’s argument that mere third-party use of marks comprising “A TO Z” elsewhere in the pharmaceutical trade was a valid defence, holding, by reference to Pankaj Goel v. Dabur India Ltd., 2008 SCC OnLine Del 1744, that a plaintiff is not obliged to sue every insignificant third-party user of a registered mark and that such omission does not by itself disentitle a plaintiff from maintaining a suit against a particular infringer. However, the Court held that the plaintiff’s failure to disclose in the suit that it had itself sought registration of a device mark for “A TO Z” in Class 5 (Application No. 1270049, which has remained under opposition since 2007), as well as the existence of other third-party applications for marks comprising “A TO Z” filed prior to the plaintiff’s claimed first use in 1998, amounted to suppression of material facts. Relying on the decisions of this Court in S.K. Sachdeva v. Shri Educate Ltd., 2016 (65) PTC 614 and Raman Kwatra and Anr. v. M/s KEI Industries Ltd., 2023:DHC:000083, the Court held that the plaintiff was not entitled to equitable relief on account of this concealment of material facts and the making of contrary assertions before the Court.
4.  On the claim of copyright infringement, the Court held that while the Copyright Act, 1957 entitles the proprietor of an artistic work to protection of that work, it does not entitle the plaintiff to monopolise the use of the letters “A” and “Z” in any manner whatsoever. The Court found, on a holistic comparison of the Plaintiff’s Logo and the Impugned Mark, that the manner in which the letters “A” and “Z” were rendered in the Impugned Mark was completely different from the stylised manner in which those letters appeared in the Plaintiff’s Logo and that the plaintiff could not claim copyright protection against the ordinary use of letters of the English alphabet merely because it held copyright registration over a particular stylised rendering of those letters. The Court extended the same reasoning to the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress, finding that the only common elements between the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress and the Impugned Trade Dress were the letters “A” and “Z,” that the overall impression created by the competing trade dresses was different, that the fonts and colour schemes employed were different and that, having already found no deceptive similarity between the marks themselves, the claim against the Impugned Trade Dress could not survive independently.
5. The Court concluded that the Plaintiff’s Marks and the Impugned Mark were neither identical nor deceptively similar; that the plaintiff did not possess an exclusive right to use the letters “A” and “Z”; that the use of the Impugned Mark did not amount to infringement or passing off of the Plaintiff’s Marks, nor infringement of copyright in the Plaintiff’s Logo; and that the use of the Impugned Trade Dress did not amount to infringement of the Plaintiff’s Trade Dress. Accordingly, the Court held that no case was made out for grant of the interim injunction sought in I.A. 2537/2025, which was dismissed. Consequently, I.A. 6055/2025, the defendant’s application under Order XXXIX Rule 4 of the CPC, was allowed and the ex parte ad interim injunction granted by order dated 30.01.2025 was vacated. Both applications were disposed of accordingly.

STATUTORY PROVISIONS INVOLVED

Section 17 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 provides that when a trademark consists of several matters, its registration confers on the proprietor the exclusive right to the use of the trademark taken as a whole and where the trademark contains matter which is common to the trade or otherwise of a non-distinctive character, registration does not confer any exclusive right in that particular matter. The Court applied this provision to hold that the registration of the plaintiff’s device mark conferred exclusivity only over the mark as a whole and not over the constituent letters “A” and “Z” considered in isolation. This was a central plank of the Court’s anti-dissection analysis and its conclusion that the plaintiff had no monopoly over the use of these letters.

Section 2(c) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 defines “associated trade marks” as trademarks deemed to be or required to be, registered as associated trademarks under the Act. This provision was relied upon by the plaintiff to explain why the Trade Marks Registry had required several of the plaintiff’s “A TO Z” marks to be associated with one another, the plaintiff contending that such association arises specifically where independent use by another person of the constituent marks may cause confusion or deception.

Section 44 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 provides that associated trademarks are assignable and transmissible only as a whole and not separately, but that for all other purposes they are deemed to be registered as separate trademarks. The plaintiff relied on this provision to argue that the requirement of association of its various “A TO Z” marks by the Registry was relevant solely for purposes of assignment and transmission and did not affect the independent character or scope of each individual registration. The Court’s judgment does not record any specific rejection of this submission, though it does not appear to have altered the Court’s ultimate conclusion on deceptive similarity, which rested principally on the descriptive character of “A TO Z” and the application of the anti-dissection rule.

Section 2(1)(c) of the Copyright Act, 1957 (referred to generally as “the Copyright Act” in the judgment) governs the definition and protection of artistic works. The plaintiff claimed ownership of copyright in the Plaintiff’s Logo as an artistic work, asserting the exclusive right to use, reproduce or license that work. The Court accepted that the Copyright Act entitles the proprietor of an artistic work to protection of that work as such, but held that this protection does not extend to a monopoly over the underlying letters “A” and “Z” themselves, only to their particular stylised rendering and found no infringement on the facts since the stylisation employed in the Impugned Mark was materially different from that of the Plaintiff’s Logo.

Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 govern the grant of temporary injunctions, under which the plaintiff’s application I.A. 2537/2025 was filed seeking interim relief restraining the alleged infringement and passing off.

Order XXXIX Rule 4 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 governs applications for the discharge, variation or setting aside of an injunction order, under which the defendant’s application I.A. 6055/2025 was filed seeking vacation of the ex parte ad interim injunction granted on 30.01.2025. This application was ultimately allowed.

REASONING OF THE COURT

The Court’s reasoning proceeded through a structured analysis beginning with the foundational question of whether the plaintiff’s claimed mark was even capable of supporting exclusive rights, before turning to the comparative analysis of the competing marks, the question of clean hands and finally the distinct copyright claim.

On the threshold question of descriptiveness, the Court reasoned from the nature of the product category itself: multivitamin and multi-mineral dietary supplements are conventionally described and marketed by reference to individual vitamins designated by letters of the alphabet (Vitamin A, Vitamin B and so on, through to less commonly used designations). Given this established industry convention, the phrase “A TO Z” when applied to such a product does not function as an arbitrary or fanciful identifier but rather conveys, in ordinary and immediately comprehensible terms, that the product contains a comprehensive range of vitamins spanning the alphabet. This is the paradigm of a descriptive mark: one that describes a characteristic or quality of the goods themselves rather than serving purely as a badge of trade origin. Having reached this conclusion, the Court applied the settled principle drawn from Godfrey Philips and reinforced by the recent Supreme Court decision in Pernod Ricard that descriptive marks require proof of acquired secondary meaning before they can support exclusive rights and the Court found this requirement unmet on the facts before it, additionally noting the persuasive weight of the plaintiff’s own prior concession, in separate Registry opposition proceedings, that its device mark’s protection was confined to its specific stylisation rather than extending to the underlying letters.

Building on this finding of descriptiveness, the Court’s subsequent analysis of deceptive similarity followed naturally: having concluded that the plaintiff could claim no exclusivity over the bare letters “A” and “Z,” any comparative analysis necessarily had to be conducted at the level of the marks taken as a whole that is, applying the anti-dissection rule mandated by Section 17 of the Trade Marks Act and reaffirmed in Pernod Ricard. The Court’s comparison of the Impugned Mark “MULTIVEIN AZ” against the Plaintiff’s Marks, conducted on this holistic basis, led it to identify several material points of difference: the dominant verbal element “MULTIVEIN” (itself suggestive of veins or a vascular network, distinct in concept from any notion of alphabetical completeness), the altered phonetic rhythm introduced by this additional word and differences in colour scheme and overall visual layout. The cumulative effect of these differences, in the Court’s assessment, was sufficient to dispel any likelihood of confusion in the mind of the average consumer, notwithstanding the shared presence of the letters “A” and “Z” within both marks.

On the question of concealment, the Court drew a careful distinction between two categories of non-disclosure raised by the defendant. The first failure to sue every third party using similar marks elsewhere in the trade was held, consistent with Pankaj Goel, not to constitute culpable concealment, since a trademark proprietor cannot reasonably be expected to pursue every instance of third-party use, however insignificant, as a precondition to enforcing its rights against a particular infringer. The second category non-disclosure of the plaintiff’s own prior applications for “A TO Z” in Class 5, including one currently under opposition, one withdrawn and one abandoned was treated altogether differently, since this information bore directly and materially on the very question the Court was being asked to decide: the scope and strength of the plaintiff’s claimed rights in “A TO Z” within the specific class of goods at issue in the suit. The Court treated the suppression of this directly material information as sufficient, applying established equitable principles articulated in S.K. Sachdeva and Raman Kwatra, to disentitle the plaintiff to the discretionary, equitable relief of an interim injunction.

Finally, on copyright, the Court applied a structurally identical form of reasoning to that used for the trademark claim: copyright in an artistic work protects the particular expression  here, the specific stylised rendering of the letters “A” and “Z” and the word “TO” but does not extend to the underlying letters themselves, which remain part of the common stock of the English alphabet available to all. Since the manner of stylisation employed in the Impugned Mark and the Plaintiff’s Logo were found to differ substantially, no copyright infringement could be made out and the trade dress claim, lacking any independent basis once the absence of mark-level confusion had been established, could not survive on its own.

DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE

This judgment makes a useful contribution to Indian trademark jurisprudence on two related and recurring themes: the treatment of descriptive marks in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical sector and the proper application of the anti-dissection rule where a plaintiff’s registered rights are confined to a device mark rather than extending to a standalone word mark.

The most significant doctrinal contribution is the Court’s treatment of “A TO Z” as a descriptive term in the specific context of multivitamin and dietary supplement products. This represents a useful, sector-specific application of the broader principle most recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Pernod Ricard India that generic and descriptive expressions, being publici juris, cannot be monopolised absent proof of acquired secondary meaning. The judgment is a clear illustration of how courts will examine whether a term, even if not descriptive in the abstract, becomes descriptive when assessed against the specific category of goods to which it is applied here, the established industry practice of designating vitamins alphabetically rendered “A TO Z” an apt and therefore descriptive, designation for a comprehensive multivitamin product.

The judgment’s reliance on the plaintiff’s own prior representations before the Trade Marks Registry specifically its concession, in separate opposition proceedings, that protection for its device mark was confined to its particular stylisation is a notable feature, illustrating how a trademark proprietor’s own positions taken in unrelated administrative proceedings can be deployed against it in subsequent civil litigation concerning the scope of its rights. This serves as a caution to trademark holders regarding the downstream consequences of narrow concessions made for tactical reasons in one proceeding.

The judgment also reinforces the application of Section 17 of the Trade Marks Act and the anti-dissection rule in cases involving device marks containing common or descriptive letter/word elements, confirming that registration of a composite device mark does not, by itself, confer exclusivity over its dissected components, particularly where a separate application for the word mark or letter combination alone has not matured to registration or remains under opposition.

On the question of suppression of material facts, the judgment offers a useful and practically important distinction between immaterial non-disclosure (failure to proceed against every third-party infringer) and material non-disclosure (failure to disclose the proprietor’s own prior, unsuccessful or pending applications directly bearing on the scope of the claimed mark). This distinction will be of practical guidance to litigants and counsel in framing pleadings and in anticipating challenges based on alleged suppression at the interim injunction stage.

Finally, the judgment’s treatment of the copyright claim confirming that copyright protection for a stylised rendering of common alphabetical characters does not extend to a monopoly over those characters themselves, however rendered provides useful clarification on the limits of copyright protection for logos and label designs incorporating common letters or words, an issue that frequently arises in tandem with trademark disputes in the pharmaceutical sector.

The judgment must be read as a ruling at the interim injunction stage, based on a prima facie assessment of the rival contentions and the material placed before the Court. The Court did not purport to finally and conclusively determine the underlying questions of validity, infringement or passing off, all of which, in the ordinary course, would remain open for adjudication at trial, including the larger questions of suppression and continued maintainability of the suit raised by the defendant.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. What was the outcome of Alkem Laboratories v. Prevego Healthcare?
   The Delhi High Court dismissed Alkem’s application for an interim injunction, holding that its ‘A TO Z’ mark was descriptive and not deceptively similar to the defendant’s ‘MULTIVEIN AZ’ mark, and vacated the earlier ex parte injunction.
2. Why did the Court hold the ‘A TO Z’ trademark to be descriptive?
   Because multivitamin and dietary supplement products are conventionally described by reference to individual vitamins designated by letters of the alphabet, the Court found that ‘A TO Z’ merely conveys comprehensiveness rather than functioning as a distinctive source identifier.
3. What is the anti-dissection rule in trademark law?
   The anti-dissection rule requires that composite or device marks be compared as a whole against an allegedly infringing mark, rather than broken down into individual elements like single letters for piecemeal comparison.
4. Can a trademark owner claim exclusive rights over individual letters within a device mark?
   No — under Section 17 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, registration of a composite device mark confers exclusivity only over the mark as a whole, not over common or non-distinctive elements such as individual letters considered in isolation.
5. What amounted to suppression of material facts in this case?
   The Court held that Alkem’s failure to disclose its own prior ‘A TO Z’ applications in Class 5 one under opposition, one withdrawn, and one abandoned was material non-disclosure that disentitled it to equitable injunctive relief.

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