Shimow Hospitality Private Limited runs five restaurants under the name Benne, three in Mumbai and two in the Delhi NCR region, built around the Bengaluru style of dosa service that gives the brand its name. The company says it conceived the mark in 2023-24 and has traded under it since, with the rights eventually assigned to it by an associate entity, Shimow Foods LLP, under a deed of assignment dated 13 July 2026. Sometime in August 2026, Shimow says it discovered that a Delhi outlet was operating as 'Benne Delhi,' serving the same style of South Indian food under a name close enough to cause real confusion among customers ordering off Swiggy or Magicpin, or scrolling past the outlet's promotions on YouTube and Instagram.
Shimow filed CS(COMM) 1131/2026 before the Delhi High Court, pleading infringement and passing off and asking for an ex parte ad interim injunction before the defendant could entrench itself further. The suit came with the usual complication that attends a coined or adopted hospitality mark before it clears the registry: Shimow's BENNE applications were filed only on 29 September 2026 and were still moving through examination, not yet registered. That did not stand in the plaintiff's way, since passing off protects goodwill built through use, independent of whether a registration certificate has issued.
Justice Vikas Mahajan heard the matter and granted the ex parte interim relief on 16 October 2026, restraining Benne Delhi, its proprietor, and anyone acting on their behalf from using 'BENNE,' 'BENNE DELHI,' or any mark identical or deceptively similar to it, in connection with their restaurant and cloud kitchen business. The order records a prima facie case in the plaintiff's favour, finding that two outlets trading under near-identical names and serving near-identical cuisine in the same city create a genuine risk that customers will assume a connection between the two that does not exist. On that footing the court held the balance of convenience favoured Shimow and that it would suffer irreparable loss if the defendant were allowed to continue trading under the Benne name while the suit proceeded.
None of this turns on any exotic point of trademark doctrine. A plaintiff seeking an ex parte injunction has to show, at the first hearing and without the defendant's side of the story, that its claim is strong enough to justify restraining the other side before a reply is even filed. Judges tend to grant that relief sparingly in ordinary commercial disputes, but a dispute over a restaurant name is close to the paradigm case for it: delay lets the junior user build up a customer base of its own, after which an injunction, however justified, starts to look punitive rather than protective. Justice Mahajan's order reads as a straightforward application of that logic to a dispute between two businesses trading in the same city under names a diner would struggle to tell apart.
The order leaves the merits of the suit itself untouched. Benne Delhi has not yet had the chance to put in its defence, whether that defence turns on prior use, honest adoption, or some other ground, and the interim injunction can be varied or vacated once it does. The matter is listed before the Joint Registrar on 9 December 2026 for the usual procedural steps, with the suit itself returning before the court on 9 February 2027.
For multi-city food and hospitality brands, the case is a reminder of how exposed a name becomes the moment it starts travelling between cities on delivery platforms and social media rather than staying put in one neighbourhood. A name that drew no objection while the business ran out of a handful of outlets in one city can turn into a live infringement dispute within months of a second city picking it up, and an unregistered or still-pending mark is no bar to an interim injunction where the plaintiff can show prior adoption and a real likelihood of confusion. Brand owners expanding across cities would do well to file their trademark applications well before the expansion, rather than treat registration as paperwork to tidy up once the new outlets are already open.