The Delhi High Court has refused to grant interim protection to pharmaceutical company Alkem Laboratories Ltd. in its trademark dispute against Prevego Healthcare & Research Pvt Ltd, allowing the latter to continue selling its multivitamin product under the brand name Multivein AZ while the litigation proceeds.

Alkem had approached the High Court seeking to restrain Prevego from using a mark similar to its long-standing “A to Z” and “A to Z-NS” trademarks, claiming infringement and copyright violations. However, a single-judge bench led by Justice Tejas Karia held that English alphabets such as “A” and “Z” cannot be monopolised under trademark law, and that the phrase “A to Z” was inherently descriptive and generic when used on multivitamin products.

The Court emphasised that trademarks should be evaluated in their entirety, noting that Prevego’s Multivein AZ — with distinct visual, phonetic and conceptual elements — differed sufficiently from Alkem’s mark to minimise the likelihood of consumer confusion. It also pointed to differences in fonts, colour schemes and trade dress between the competing products.

In its verdict, the High Court stressed that letters of the English alphabet cannot be exclusively claimed by one party through trademark protection and that descriptive marks lacking distinctiveness do not justify interim injunctions.

As a result, Prevego Healthcare will be permitted to continue marketing and selling its Multivein AZ supplement while the substantive dispute over trademark rights continues before the court.