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21. Law on this issue is no longer res integra. In M/s. South India Beverages Pvt. Ltd. v. General Mills Marketing Inc. & Anr., 2014 SCC OnLine Del 1953, a Division Bench of this Court emphasised on the rule of anti-dissection and stated that the Courts while dealing with the case of trademark infringement, involving composite marks must consider the same in their entirety as an indivisible whole rather than truncating or dissecting them into their component parts and making comparison with the corresponding parts of the rival marks to determine confusion. However, having so observed, the Division Bench held that it is permissible to accord more or less importance or the dominance to a particular portion or element of a mark in case of composite marks and that the principle of 'anti-dissection' does not Neutral Citation Number: 2022/DHC/004894 impose an absolute embargo upon consideration of the constituent elements of a composite mark. Thus, the principle of anti-dissection and identification of dominant mark are not anti-thetical to one another and if viewed from a holistic perspective, the said principles complement each other.

23. The Division Bench of this Court in Himalaya Drug Company v. S.B.L. Limited, 2012 SCC OnLine Del 5701, elucidated the significance of the 'essential' features of the trademark and observed as under:

"44. The courts have propounded the doctrine of prominent and essential feature of the trade mark for the purposes of adjudication of the disputes relating to infringement of trade mark. While deciding the question of infringement, the court has to see the prominent or the dominant feature of the trade mark. Even the learned single judge agrees to this proposition when the learned judge quotes McCarthy on Trade Marks that all composite marks are to be compared as whole. However, it is dependent on case to case to basis as a matter of jury question as to what can be the possible broad and essential feature of the trade mark in question.

24. These principles were followed by a Co-ordinate Bench of this Court in Max Healthcare Institute Limited v. Sahrudya Health Care Private Limited, 2017 SCC OnLine Del 12031, holding that 'MAX' is the essential feature of the label mark of the 6 trademarks of the Plaintiff therein and thus the use of the word 'MAX' by the Defendant amounts to infringement albeit the decision was taken in the context of deciding an application filed by the Defendant under Order 7 Rule 11 CPC. The Bombay High Court in Brihan Karan Sugar Syndicate Pvt. Ltd. v. Lokranjan Breweries Pvt. Ltd., 2014 SCC OnLine Bom 1063, was dealing with the claim for infringement by the Plaintiff with respect to the registered trademark 'TANGO PUNCH' and the issue was whether the word 'TANGO' was an essential, leading and memorable feature of the mark as the Plaintiff had sought to restrain the Defendant from using the bottles with a trademark 'TANGO'. Opposition by the Defendant was on the ground that Plaintiff's registered mark was a composite label and not a word mark and Plaintiff could claim no monopoly on the word 'TANGO', not being registered separately as a word mark. Relying on the judgment in Ultra Tech Cement Limited v. Alaknanda Cement Pvt. Ltd. and Another, 2011 SCC OnLine Bom 783 and other judgments on the point, the Bombay High Court held as under:

(a) The nature of the marks i.e. whether the marks are word marks or label marks or composite marks i.e. both words and label works.

(b) The degree of resembleness between the marks, phonetically similar and hence similar in idea.

(c) The nature of the goods in respect of which they are used as trade marks.