It should be noted that according to Section 13(a) of the Commercial Torts Law, the court may award compensation to the victim without proof of damage up to the sum of ILS 100,000. This provision further stipulates with regard to the compensation ruling that torts committed as a single set of acts will be considered as a single tort. With regard to the award of compensation, it was determined that the court would take into account, inter alia, the number of violations or wrongs committed by the defendant, the location of these violations and the nature and size of the infringing business (see, for example, the judgment in Other Municipal Applications 5671/11 Anderson Medical in the Tax Appeal v. Unipharm (Nevo, July 15, 2012), para. 6).
- In light of this legal framework and on the basis of the evidence presented in the present proceeding, the disputes between the parties will be examined and decided below.
- 3. Trade Name & Logo
- As stated above, the plaintiff argues that these are not the requirements and tests of use permitted in the case law as "true use". This is because the defendants regularly make unnecessary and unjustified use of its trademark - "Toyota" - as part of their business name in Hebrew - "Toyota Rehovot", in English - "Toyota Rehovot" and in the plaintiff's logo. According to her, this use of the name of the business, which combines the Toyota trademark but with a geographical location indication - Rehovot, alongside the plaintiff's logo, conveys a clearly misleading message, according to which the defendant is ostensibly an authorized agency on behalf of Toyota operating under its auspices in the city of Rehovot. According to the plaintiff, which relies on the case law on this issue reviewed above, even if this is only an initial deception and the customers will understand after entering the business that it is a parallel importer and not a Toyota licensed business, this is not enough, since the effect of the deception has already taken effect.
It was further argued that the use of the phrase "parallel imports" was made less prominently compared to the use of the plaintiff's trademark and logo. The plaintiff included in her evidence a number of examples that her authorized agencies also use similar names that include mentioning their geographical location, such as "Toyota Ashkelon", "Toyota Jerusalem" and others (P/9-P/10).