Imagine Marketing Private Limited owns the boAt and BOAT trademarks, and it built a large audio and wearable business around that brand. Exotic Mile sells competing products under the mark BOULT, and the two companies have fought over that word since 2019. Imagine Marketing went back to the Delhi High Court this year and asked for a fresh interim injunction against the bare wordmark BOULT, a relief its first application never secured. Justice Jyoti Singh dismissed the attempt, and her order in Imagine Marketing Pvt Ltd v Exotic Mile draws a sharp line around how many times a plaintiff can ask a court for the same relief.
What the boAt vs BOULT Dispute Has Always Been About
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Imagine Marketing coined the boAt brand in 2014 and built it into one of India’s largest audio and wearable brands, selling earphones, headphones and speakers under the boAt name and its triangular logo. Exotic Mile has sold competing gadgets under the mark BOULT since 2017, along with device marks and product names that Imagine Marketing considers deceptively close to its own. Imagine Marketing filed a commercial suit against Exotic Mile in 2019, seeking a permanent injunction against BOULT, related device marks, the tagline UNPLUG YOURSELF and product names like Boult Bass Buds, which it argued copied boAt Bass Heads. The core question across every round of this litigation stays the same. Does BOULT sound and look close enough to BOAT to confuse an ordinary buyer.
How the 2019 Interim Order Left the Word BOULT Untouched
A single judge granted Imagine Marketing an ex parte ad interim injunction in 2019, and that early order restrained Exotic Mile from using the wordmark BOULT along with certain device marks. Exotic Mile challenged the ex parte order and applied to vacate it. When the court finally decided both the injunction application and the vacation application together in January 2020, the operative order pulled back sharply. It restrained Exotic Mile only from using specified device marks and the tagline UNPLUG YOURSELF. The bare wordmark BOULT dropped out of the final restraint, even though the earlier ex parte order had covered it. Nobody flagged this gap loudly at the time, and Exotic Mile carried on using the word BOULT itself while phasing out the restrained device marks and building a new mark, GOBOULT.
The Division Bench Appeal and the Passing Remark That Changed Everything
Exotic Mile appealed the January 2020 order to a Division Bench, arguing among other things that the tagline restraint went beyond what Imagine Marketing had asked for in its pleadings. The Division Bench agreed on the tagline point and set aside the restraint on UNPLUG YOURSELF, since Imagine Marketing had never specifically prayed for it. The Bench upheld the injunction on the device marks and confirmed that GOBOULT sat outside the scope of the original order. Along the way, the Division Bench noted that the operative order under appeal had never restrained the wordmark BOULT itself. That single observation, made almost in passing, became the foundation for Imagine Marketing’s next move.
Why Imagine Marketing Went Back to Court for a Second Injunction
Imagine Marketing read the Division Bench’s observation as confirmation that the 2020 order had missed something it deserved. The company filed a fresh application under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Civil Procedure Code, this time asking specifically for an injunction against the bare wordmark BOULT. Imagine Marketing argued that the earlier omission was inadvertent, a drafting gap rather than a deliberate decision to leave the word unrestrained. Exotic Mile pushed back hard. It argued that Imagine Marketing had already sought this exact relief in 2019, that the 2020 order had already declined it, and that trying again now amounted to issue estoppel and an abuse of the court’s process.
The Legal Question Before Justice Jyoti Singh
Justice Jyoti Singh had to decide something narrower than the underlying trademark dispute itself. Can a plaintiff bring a second injunction application for relief a court effectively declined the first time, without pointing to any changed circumstances or undue hardship. The question mattered because Indian courts guard against endless rounds of interim litigation over the same facts. If plaintiffs could refile injunction applications every time they found a favourable stray remark in a later order, defendants would never get finality on interim relief.
What the Rakesh Madan Precedent Requires
Justice Jyoti Singh anchored her decision in Rakesh Madan v Rajasthan Financial Corporation, a precedent that draws a firm boundary around repeat injunction applications. That precedent holds that courts should not entertain a second injunction application on an identical set of facts, and it carves out only two exceptions, changed circumstances after the first order and undue hardship the plaintiff would suffer without fresh relief. Imagine Marketing needed to bring itself within one of those two exceptions to succeed. It could not point to anything new that had happened between January 2020 and its fresh application. It also could not show hardship beyond the ordinary consequence of losing part of an interim order years earlier.
Why the Court Found No Ambiguity in the Six Year Old Order
Imagine Marketing’s core argument rested on ambiguity. It claimed the 2020 order left the status of the wordmark BOULT unclear enough to justify a fresh look. Justice Jyoti Singh rejected that framing. She read the operative portion of the 2020 order and found it precise about what it restrained, specified device marks and the tagline UNPLUG YOURSELF, and precise about what it left untouched, everything else including the bare word BOULT. An order that grants some relief and withholds other relief does not become ambiguous just because a plaintiff wishes it had gone further. A six year old order that says what it means does not turn uncertain because a later Bench happens to mention what it left out.
The Withdrawn Clarification Application That Weakened the Case
Before filing this fresh injunction application, Imagine Marketing had already tried a different route. It filed an application seeking clarification of the 2020 order, presumably to settle whether the wordmark BOULT stood restrained or not, and then withdrew that application before the court ruled on it. Justice Jyoti Singh treated this sequence as telling. A party that believed an order was unclear would normally pursue a clarification application rather than abandon it midway. Withdrawing that application and then filing a fresh injunction bid over the same gap looked less like correcting an oversight and more like shopping for a second chance at relief the court had already withheld.
Second Injunction Applications and the Doctrine Against Relitigation
Indian civil procedure does not treat every fresh application as an open invitation to relitigate settled points. Courts apply something close to issue estoppel at the interlocutory stage. Once a court decides an interim question on a given set of facts, the same party cannot ask a different bench, or the same bench later, to revisit that question absent new facts. This doctrine protects defendants from open ended litigation risk and protects judicial time from repeated arguments over settled ground. Justice Jyoti Singh’s order applies this doctrine cleanly to trademark litigation, an area where plaintiffs often hold strong incentives to keep pushing for broader restraints as a dispute drags on for years.
What This Means for the Broader BOAT vs BOULT Trademark Battle
The dismissal of this second application does not end the underlying suit between Imagine Marketing and Exotic Mile, which still awaits trial on the merits of infringement, passing off and copyright claims. What it does settle, at least for now, is the scope of interim protection. Exotic Mile can continue using the bare wordmark BOULT while the case proceeds, subject only to the restraints on specific device marks that survived the Division Bench appeal. Imagine Marketing keeps its claims over BOULT alive for trial, but it will not get interim protection over the word itself unless the final judgment goes its way.
Lessons for Litigants Who Miss Relief the First Time
This order carries a clear warning for any plaintiff who feels an earlier interim order left money on the table. Courts will not treat a stray observation in a later appellate order as a licence to reopen settled relief. Litigants who believe an order omitted something by mistake need to move fast and move through the right procedural channel, typically a review or clarification application decided promptly, rather than waiting years and then filing a fresh substantive application dressed up as correcting an oversight. Once a party starts down the clarification route and abandons it, coming back later with the same ask invites exactly the scepticism Imagine Marketing ran into here.
How This Fits the Earlier Phonetic Similarity Ruling on BOULT
This dispute has already produced meaningful guidance on how Indian courts compare rival marks for deceptive similarity, reasoning that shaped the device mark restraint that still binds Exotic Mile today. Our earlier article on what actually counts as deceptive similarity covers the phonetic test the courts used against Exotic Mile back when the device marks were first restrained, and it is worth revisiting now that the fight over the bare wordmark has ended this way. Reading both pieces together shows how one trademark dispute can split into separate legal battles, one over whether marks resemble each other and another over how many times a plaintiff gets to ask a court for the same protection.
Also Read: Delhi HC Cancels ‘Glass Skin’ Trademark Registration
Conclusion
Justice Jyoti Singh’s order in Imagine Marketing Pvt Ltd v Exotic Mile does not decide whether BOULT infringes boAt’s trademarks. It decides something procedurally important instead, that trademark litigation cannot become a series of second attempts every time a plaintiff spots a fresh angle in an appellate order. That principle will likely outlast this particular dispute over earphones and speakers.
