Delhi High Court orders blocking of websites infringing Fabindia trademark

The Delhi High Court recently restrained websites from using, in any form, the trademark of retail company Fabindia in relation to retail services or any other allied goods or services. [Fabindia Ltd v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe & Ors].A Bench of Justice C Hari Shankar issued interim orders directing internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to the infringing websites. It further ordered,"In order to ensure that the plaintiff is not required to come again and again to the Court, this injunction shall extend to any other website/domain name using the mark “Fabindia” to which the plaintiff draws the attention of the defendants. In case, any such new infringing website comes up, the plaintiff shall file an additional affidavit before this Court drawing attention of the Court to the said website.".Fabindia claimed that there were multiple fake websites falsely asserting themselves as sellers/resellers of the its products, thereby luring customers to make purchases. The products in question are purportedly sold through Shopify and Pay-U websites, it contended.The company asserted that it had received 1,114 complaints through its customer care hotline regarding the proliferation of fake/rogue websites, and that this number continues to rise daily.It thus sought a permanent injunction to prohibit any website from using the trademark/trade name Fabindia or any variation thereof. Since the identities of the individuals operating these websites are unknown, Fabindia approached the Court against Ashok Kumar/John Doe..Fabindia also provided screenshots to the Court comparing the defendants' websites with that of its own.A review of these screenshots clearly indicates that the defendants are closely mimicking the appearance and overall presentation of the plaintiff's website, the Court noted.Thus, the Court passed the interim order in favour of Fabindia..Senior Advocate Viraj Datar along with Advocates Dipankar Vig, Pranay Sarkar, Kunal Juneja, Ujjwala Gupta and Saurav Joon represented plaintiff.Advocates Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar, Srish Kumar Mishra, Alexander Mathai Paikaday and Krishnan V represented defendants..[Read Order]