Delhi High Court temporarily restrains entities from holding themselves out as Starbucks franchisees sans authorisation

The Delhi High Court recently temporarily restrained a few unknown entities from holding themselves to be franchisees of Starbucks without any authorisation. [Starbucks Corporation and Anr v. National Interest Exchange of India].Justice C Hari Shankar observed that the Court was bound to interfere given that the case was one of imposters holding themselves out, without authorisation, to be franchisees of Starbucks. Hence, the Court registered the plaint as a suit.."The case being one of unauthorised imposters holding themselves out, without authorisation, to be franchisees of the plaintiffs, the Court is bound to interfere. In the circumstances, let the plaint be registered as a suit," the order stated..Starbucks approached the Court alleging that certain unknown entities were incorrectly claiming to be its authorised franchisees, and misleading the public.It brought to the Court's notice a few such domain names like starbucks-franchise.com, www.starbucksfranchise.in and starbucksfranchise.co.in.The plaint further stated that the money earned by the unauthorised representatives was being deposited in a bank in Mumbai's Lower Parel. Hence, the plaintiffs prayed that the Court restrain these entitites from defrauding the public, and collecting and misappropriating money.After registering the plaint as a suit, the Court issued summons to the defendants and sought written statements within 30 days..On the application seeking interim injunctive relief, the Court issued notice returnable on July 24, 2023.Additionally, it directed Google to disable an unauthorised email ID, starbucksdealership@gmail.com, and to provide to the plaintiffs details of the holder of the email ID.The Court also directed blocking of access to the domain names mentioned in the plaint.Further, it directed freezing of the bank account number mentioned in the plaint and directed the bank to disclose the identity of the holder to the Court.Finally, the Court ordered blocking of a phone number mentioned by the plaintiffs and directed that the identity of the holder of the number be disclosed as well. The blockings are to continue till the next date of hearing..Advocates Priya Adlakha, Bindra Rana, Rima Majumdar and Shilpi Sinha appeared for Starbucks.The National Internet Exchange of India was represented by Advocate Alexander Mathai..[Read Order]