Delhi High Court orders WhatsApp, Telegram to delete groups, block accounts cheating people in the name of Sequoia Capital

The Delhi High Court recently ordered messaging platforms WhatsApp and Telegram to delete all groups/community groups and accounts/channels which are defrauding people by misusing the trademark of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital [Sequoia Capital Operations LLC v John Doe and Others]..Sequoia is a venture capital firm having its headquarters at California in United States of America. It offers investment services in various sectors such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cryptocurrency, healthcare, fintech, e-commerce, edtech and telecom..Justice Sanjeev Narula passed the order on January 24 noting that these accounts and channels were being used to dupe people and irreparable loss will be caused to Sequoia if the order is not passed. “Defendant No. 2, Meta Platforms Inc., is directed to remove/block WhatsApp accounts of the mobile numbers as mentioned in Document-A annexed with the plaint. They shall also delete the WhatsApp group ‘John Analyst Group-303’ or any other groups/ community groups created by/ administered by the phone numbers of the group admins of the aforesaid group that are misusing the Plaintiff’s trademarks in their communications. Defendant No. 3, Telegram FZ-LLC, is directed to remove/ block Telegram accounts as mentioned in Document-B annexed with the plaint. They shall further delete all other groups/community groups created by/ administered by the said phone numbers and/or misusing the Plaintiff’s trademarks in their communications,” the Court ordered..It directed the Domain Name Registrar (DNR) to suspend the domain names and maintains status quo regarding the ownership of the domain names used by alleged fraudsters to lure people in the name of Sequoia.“They [DNR] shall further file in a sealed cover the necessary information pertaining to the identity of the registrants of the aforesaid domain names, as is available with them, within a period of four weeks from today,” the Court said.The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications were ordered to issue notification/directions to all telecom and internet service providers to permanently block/remove access to all the telephone numbers, websites and domain names which are alleged to be misusing the Sequoia trademark..The Court passed the detailed order while dealing with a suit filed by Sequoia (plaintiff).In was the plaintiff’s case that in September 2023, they were informed of a WhatsApp group named John Analyst Group-303 managed by persons who identified themselves as Sequoia Capital Investors Advisors and Sequoia Capital BTC Trading Team, purportedly a part of the Sequoia Capital Group.The informant revealed that she had been added to this WhatsApp group without her consent and that the group admins were circulating several trading and investment advices. Defendant No. 1 (John Doe defendant/unknown people) would then ask the investors to register themselves first and then get a referral code from one Assistant Anne.The informant provided Sequoia’s representative with all the WhatsApp conversations on John Analyst Group-303 which contained the details of group admins and also another Telegram account of one Anne.Sequoia then hired an investigator to look into the matter.The investigator approached Assistant Anne, who advised the investigator to register a Bitcoin trading account on the website ‘www.leadlec.com, using the invitation code ‘pke9’ and also directed him to create Cryptocurrency wallet on a third-party platform, such as Binance or KuCoin, purchase 50 USDT (US Dollar Tether) and transfer the same to his Leadlec Account created on the aforesaid website.Assistant Anne further stated that after the Investigator would furnish a screenshot evidencing the transfer of funds, he would be added to a WhatsApp group, where the analysts will share investment tips and trading strategies. Therefore, the Investigator could not obtain any further information from Assistant Anne.The website leadlec.com became inactive in November 2023. However, in January 2024 Sequoia received fresh complaints. As the investigator again reached out to Assistant Anne, he was now directed to a fraudulent website www.leadleacoin.com..Justice Narula considered the case and held that the scamsters are attracting unsuspecting consumers using Sequoia trademarks and the group admins of the WhatsApp or Telegram channels have not been authorised by Sequoia to offer financial trading or investment related advices.“The users are being re-directed to the website “www.leadleacoin.com”, an alleged bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange, which again, is not linked with the Plaintiff. Prima facie, it appears to be an illegitimate website, intended to be used as a ploy to induce the users to invest substantial sums of money. This further affects the plaintiff’s standing in the market as the consumers are initially drawn by the use of the “SEQUOIA” trademark,” the Court noted. It, therefore, passed the interim injunction order in favour of the plaintiff..Advocates Shwetasree Majumder, Priya Adlakha, Vardaan Anand and Shiv Mehrotra appeared for Sequoia Capital.Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Nidhi Raman along with advocates Zubin Singh and Rahul Kumar Sharma appeared for the Union of India.Advocates Anushka Sharda and Madhav Khosla represented Telegram. .[Read Order]